CVS Health has agreed to pay 315 million dollars to resolve federal allegations relating to its opioid prescribing and dispensing practices, BioPharma Dive reported. The settlement closes another front in the litigation that has followed the largest US pharmacy chains for a decade over their role in the opioid epidemic.
The economics are familiar by now. Pharmacy benefit and retail chains have paid out tens of billions in aggregate across state, federal and private settlements, and the payments have shifted from existential events to a recurring cost of operating in US healthcare, budgeted, reserved and disclosed like rent. What investors watch is whether the tail is shortening: the number of open fronts, not the size of any single cheque.
CVS has not, in the reporting checked, broken out the settlement’s effect on its guidance. This item is single sourced in today’s corroboration pass and is carried at grade C; the Justice Department’s own release had not been located when this edition closed.