Optum (Image: Shutterstock)
West Virginia sued Optum — UnitedHealthcare’s pharmacy benefit manager — on Monday, alleging that it contributed to the widespread oversupply of opioids in that state. The lawsuit comes on the heels of a state investigation in which the Attorney General’s office said it found Optum not only was “ramping up the flood of pills coming into West Virginia, but actively obstructing safeguards meant to save West Virginian lives” and claimed that “Optum conspired with drug manufactures to push phony science claiming opioids were safe and non-addictive.”
“Optum played a key role in the man-made medical crisis that destroyed countless lives and decimated our state,” Attorney General JB McCuskey said in a statement. “When Optum came into West Virginia around 2010, it knew the toll that opioids were exacting on West Virginia families and communities. We called it a crisis. Optum saw a business opportunity. And in its greed, Optum chose to make things worse.”
The state also alleges that — as the entity that sat at the center of the manufacturers, distributors, and pharmacies — Optum had more data and insight into the scope of the opioid crisis than other players in the market and sold that data to manufacturers, which then leveraged it to sell even more “deadly drugs” to high-volume prescribers and pharmacies.
“As we always do, before we filed this suit, Optum was given a fair opportunity to take responsibility for its choices. Optum refused,” McCuskey said, noting that West Virginia is “turning a corner” as it relates to the opioid crisis, as 2024 was the first year since the beginning of the crisis that the state saw a decrease in opioid-related deaths.
The lawsuit was filed in the United States District Court for the Northern District of West Virginia and is the second opioid-related suit the state has filed against a PBM. The Attorney General’s office sued Express Scripts in August.
As Reuters reports, drug manufacturers, pharmacy chains, and drug distributors have agreed to pay more than $50 billion in opioid settlements with state and local governments accusing them of deceptively marketing opioid painkillers like Oxycontin as less-addictive alternatives for pain treatment.
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