Jan 13 2012
The $5 million from the settlement will be used to reimburse beneficiaries.
The New York Times: CVS Settles Prescription Price Case
After more than two years of investigation, CVS Caremark agreed on Thursday to pay $5 million to settle charges by the Federal Trade Commission that the company had misrepresented the price of certain prescription drugs in one of its Medicare drug plans, causing many older consumers to pay significantly higher prices than advertised (Abelson and Singer, 1/12).
Bloomberg: CVS Caremark To Pay $5 Million To Settle FTC Probe Of Medicare Drug Prices
The FTC said it decided to close its investigation "after a thorough and comprehensive review of the other consumer protection and competition issues in this matter," and won't take any further action "at this time," according to a letter addressed to CVS Caremark's lawyer. The FTC began investigating the business practices of the company in 2009 after CVS bought Caremark for $27.2 billion, the largest acquisition ever by a drugstore (Forden, 1/12).
The Associated Press: CVS Will Pay $5M To End Drug Price Investigation
The agency said that Medicare Part D beneficiaries choose their coverage based on listings at Medicare's Plan Finder site and similar websites. It said the RxAmerica price listings were deceptive and said many Medicare beneficiaries chose RxAmerica plans because of those prices. In some cases, the actual prices were 10 times higher than the listed prices (1/12).
 This article was reprinted from kaiserhealthnews.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.
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