FRANKFORT, Ky. -- Kentucky's attorney general has sued Express Scripts, claiming the big pharmacy benefit manager was at the center of an opioid dispensing chain that fueled a deadly addiction crisis still haunting his state. The lawsuit Attorney General Russell Coleman filed this week in state court claims St.
Louis-based Express Scripts and its affiliated organizations colluded with opioid manufacturers in deceptive marketing schemes to increase sales of the addictive drugs. The result was an epidemic of "overdose and death caused by an oversupply of opioids flooding communities from powerful corporations who sought to profit at the expense of the public,” the suit says. The amount of prescription opioids sold annually in the U.
S. quadrupled between 1999 and 2010, it says. Kentucky has been at the epicenter of the crisis with some of the nation's highest overdose death rates.
“The role of Express Scripts in causing the opioid epidemic has been largely concealed from public view,” the suit says. “But it has now become clear that, for no less than the last two decades, Express Scripts has had a key role in facilitating the oversupply of opioids through intentional conduct that disregarded needed safeguards in order to increase the prescribing, dispensing and sales of prescription opioids.” Express Scripts did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Pharmacy benefit managers, or PBMs, run prescription drug coverage for health insurers and employers that prov.
