Wal­greens asks fed­er­al court to toss Hu­mana's $642M pay­out in drug pric­ing case

Wal­greens pe­ti­tioned a fed­er­al court on Fri­day to toss Hu­mana’s $642 mil­lion ar­bi­tra­tion award in a squab­ble over pre­scrip­tion drug prices, ar­gu­ing that “no or­di­nary read­er of the con­tract at is­sue would find that Wal­greens had done any­thing wrong.”

Hu­mana filed an ar­bi­tra­tion de­mand in 2019, ac­cus­ing Wal­greens of a decade plus-long scheme to over­charge the com­pa­ny and its mem­bers through “un­law­ful­ly in­flat­ed” prices on pre­scrip­tion drugs, ac­cord­ing to doc­u­ments filed with the DC court last week. The is­sue stems from Wal­greens’ Pre­scrip­tion Sav­ings Club, a phar­ma­cy pro­gram de­signed to help unin­sured or un­der­in­sured pa­tients to ac­cess low­er prices. In fil­ing re­im­burse­ment claims to Hu­mana, the phar­ma­cy chain re­port­ed the stan­dard re­tail prices as its “usu­al and cus­tom­ary” (U&C) prices, not the spe­cial rates.

Unlock this article instantly by becoming a free subscriber.

You’ll get access to free articles each month, plus you can customize what newsletters get delivered to your inbox each week, including breaking news.

SIGN UP LOG IN BECOME A PREMIUM SUBSCRIBER