CHARLESTON, W.Va. — State attorney general J.B. McCuskey says he cancelled a press conference scheduled for Tuesday where he was set to announce a lawsuit against a pharmacy benefit manager.
“It’s our hope that the delay in this press conference will be a great step towards starting to resolve some of this and recovering money for the people of West Virginia,” McCuskey said on MetroNews Midday.
Pharmacy benefit managers act as a third party between drug manufacturers, health insurance providers, and pharmacies and handle reimbursing drug claims.
McCuskey says PBMs are the main reason many small pharmacies are struggling.
“They’re able to sell drugs to their preferred pharmacies and then they force the local pharmacies to basically eat the spread. They then will sell the same drugs to a local pharmacy at a different price, and they have to eat the loss,” McCuskey said.
“They are a group of people that need to be held accountable,” he continued.
McCuskey says through this, PBMs have been able to pocket money hand over fist.
“They are the hub of this giant spoke of this giant medical bureaucracy, and they have made an astronomical amount of money over the last 25 or 30 years,” McCuskey said.
Back in August, the state announced a lawsuit against Express Scripts, which is the largest PBM in West Virginia according to McCuskey. The state alleges that Express Scripts played a central role in the opioid crisis.
McCuskey’s Tuesday announcement comes just about a week after Fruth announced that it was selling its pharmacy practices to Walgreens. A week from now, all Fruth pharmacies will be gone and at the beginning of the year, the retail stores will be closed.
McCuskey confirmed that the potential lawsuit does not have to do with Fruth’s closing, but he said it’s the exact same grouping of companies. He says the loss of Fruth after several decades in business will hurt West Virginians.
“If you’re somebody who lives here in West Virginia, there’s a pretty good chance that you’ve gotten a prescription at Fruth. There’s a pretty good chance that you’ve gotten a WVU or Marshall sweatshirt at Fruth. There’s a pretty good chance that Fruth has been a part of your neighborhood for a very, very long time,” he said.
“The Fruth family has been incredibly generous with the people of West Virginia since I’ve been old enough to understand. There was always a Fruth Little League team, they always sponsored everything you can sponsor because that’s what local businesses do.”