Arkansas AG Griffin sues pharmacy benefit managers for alleged role in state's opioid epidemic

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (KNWA/KFTA) — Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin has filed a lawsuit against two pharmacy benefit managers for their “role in causing the opioid epidemic in Arkansas,” according to a Press release.

The lawsuit filed Monday in Pulaski County Circuit Court, Optum, Inc. and Express Scripts, Inc., and their subsidiaries, are accused of:

• Fueling the state's opioid epidemic by increasing opioid use by placing opioids at lower levels on their formularies, controlling which less addictive pain treatments were available to patients, and falsely claiming that their formularies were designed to be profitable and achieve favorable health outcomes, but instead were designed to maximize profits
• Operating online retail pharmacies that dispensed billions of morphine milligram equivalents of opioids while failing to comply with state and federal controlled substance laws
• Being aware of the opioid epidemic in Arkansas and taking no action

In the statement, Griffin called for PBMs to be held accountable for “creating a public nuisance through their actions, being negligent in their actions, and unjustly enriching themselves.”

Griffin said Arkansas had the second-highest opioid prescription rate in the country in 2016, with 114.6 opioids dispensed per 100 residents.

“Pill by pill and dollar by dollar, PBMs have enabled the opioid epidemic in Arkansas. Today, we begin the process of holding them accountable for the role they played in a crisis that has ravaged our state – a crisis they helped cause, contributed to, and enabled .

PBMs profited financially from the Arkansas opioid crisis by negotiating favorable deals with opioid manufacturers while forgetting the interests of Arkansans who received prescriptions. Instead of protecting consumers by leveraging data to reduce overprescribing, PBMs have focused on financial incentives in the form of manufacturer rebates to generate profits at people's expense,” Griffin said in a statement.

Click here to read a copy of the full lawsuit.