Post by account_disabled on Mar 5, 2024 1:09:39 GMT -4
The Justice Department is suing Walmart, alleging that the country's largest retailer illegally distributed controlled substances through its pharmacies and helped fuel the country's opioid crisis.
In a civil lawsuit filed Tuesday, the federal Chile Mobile Number List government alleges that Walmart pressured its pharmacists to quickly fill opioid prescriptions, denying them the ability to reject invalid prescriptions.
As a result, the lawsuit alleges, those pharmacists knowingly filled thousands of prescriptions that came from “pill mills,” prescriptions for particular drug combinations that are widely abused, and prescriptions that other Walmart pharmacies had marked as invalid. The latter meant that "when a Walmart pharmacist recognized that a customer's prescription was invalid, the customer could simply find another Walmart pharmacist or store to fill the same or similar prescription ," the complaint reads.
The government also accuses Walmart of failing to detect and report suspicious prescriptions to the US Drug Enforcement Administration, as required by law.
Walmart knew that its distribution centers were using an inadequate system to detect and report suspicious orders. As a result of this inadequate system, Walmart reported virtually no suspicious orders for years.
Jason Dunn, US Attorney for Colorado.
Walmart operates more than 5,000 pharmacies in its stores nationwide.
As a nationwide dispenser and distributor of opioids, and given the large number of pharmacies it operates, Walmart was uniquely positioned to prevent the illegal diversion of opioids. Yet for years, as the prescription drug abuse epidemic devastated the country, Walmart abdicated those responsibilities.
Complaint.
Bad doctors are to blame: Walmart
In a statement, Walmart said the government's lawsuit "is rife with factual inaccuracies and extracted documents taken out of context.
"Blaming pharmacists for not questioning the very doctors the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) approved to prescribe opioids is a transparent attempt to deflect blame from the DEA's well-documented failures to prevent bad doctors from prescribing opioids." in the first place ," the statement stated.
Walmart always empowered our pharmacists to refuse to fill prescriptions for problematic opioids, and they refused to fill hundreds of thousands of such prescriptions. Walmart submitted tens of thousands of investigative leads to the DEA, and we blocked thousands of shady doctors from filling their opioid prescriptions at our pharmacies.
Release.
In October, Walmart filed its own preemptive lawsuit against the Department of Justice, Attorney General William Barr and the Drug Enforcement Administration. In that lawsuit, Walmart said the Justice Department's investigation, launched in 2016, had identified hundreds of doctors who wrote problematic prescriptions that Walmart pharmacists should not have filled. But Walmart's lawsuit alleged that nearly 70% of doctors still have active registrations with the DEA.
Walmart's lawsuit alleged that the government blamed it for a lack of regulatory and compliance policies to stop the crisis. The company is asking a federal judge to declare that the government has no basis to seek civil damages, and its lawsuit remains ongoing.
In a civil lawsuit filed Tuesday, the federal Chile Mobile Number List government alleges that Walmart pressured its pharmacists to quickly fill opioid prescriptions, denying them the ability to reject invalid prescriptions.
As a result, the lawsuit alleges, those pharmacists knowingly filled thousands of prescriptions that came from “pill mills,” prescriptions for particular drug combinations that are widely abused, and prescriptions that other Walmart pharmacies had marked as invalid. The latter meant that "when a Walmart pharmacist recognized that a customer's prescription was invalid, the customer could simply find another Walmart pharmacist or store to fill the same or similar prescription ," the complaint reads.
The government also accuses Walmart of failing to detect and report suspicious prescriptions to the US Drug Enforcement Administration, as required by law.
Walmart knew that its distribution centers were using an inadequate system to detect and report suspicious orders. As a result of this inadequate system, Walmart reported virtually no suspicious orders for years.
Jason Dunn, US Attorney for Colorado.
Walmart operates more than 5,000 pharmacies in its stores nationwide.
As a nationwide dispenser and distributor of opioids, and given the large number of pharmacies it operates, Walmart was uniquely positioned to prevent the illegal diversion of opioids. Yet for years, as the prescription drug abuse epidemic devastated the country, Walmart abdicated those responsibilities.
Complaint.
Bad doctors are to blame: Walmart
In a statement, Walmart said the government's lawsuit "is rife with factual inaccuracies and extracted documents taken out of context.
"Blaming pharmacists for not questioning the very doctors the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) approved to prescribe opioids is a transparent attempt to deflect blame from the DEA's well-documented failures to prevent bad doctors from prescribing opioids." in the first place ," the statement stated.
Walmart always empowered our pharmacists to refuse to fill prescriptions for problematic opioids, and they refused to fill hundreds of thousands of such prescriptions. Walmart submitted tens of thousands of investigative leads to the DEA, and we blocked thousands of shady doctors from filling their opioid prescriptions at our pharmacies.
Release.
In October, Walmart filed its own preemptive lawsuit against the Department of Justice, Attorney General William Barr and the Drug Enforcement Administration. In that lawsuit, Walmart said the Justice Department's investigation, launched in 2016, had identified hundreds of doctors who wrote problematic prescriptions that Walmart pharmacists should not have filled. But Walmart's lawsuit alleged that nearly 70% of doctors still have active registrations with the DEA.
Walmart's lawsuit alleged that the government blamed it for a lack of regulatory and compliance policies to stop the crisis. The company is asking a federal judge to declare that the government has no basis to seek civil damages, and its lawsuit remains ongoing.