Summit County sues pharmacy benefits managers over opioid crisis

CLEVELAND, Ohio — Summit County has sued a group of pharmacy benefit managers, accusing them of helping fuel the country’s opioid crisis.

Pharmacy benefit managers play a lesser-known role in the link between drug manufacturers and consumers, but the lawsuit accuses the companies of helping stoke the epidemic that ripped through communities across the country.

The lawsuit adds a new layer to the thousands of lawsuits filed by cities and counties across the country against opioid manufacturers, distributors and pharmacies that so far have resulted in billions of dollars in settlements and judgments.

Summit County’s lawsuit, filed in federal court in Akron earlier this month, seeks damages against two pharmacy benefit management companies: Express Script, LLC and Optum Rx and its subsidiaries.

The county’s attorneys asked for the lawsuit to be added to the massive case handled since 2017 by U.S. District Judge Dan Polster in Cleveland. Others have sued pharmacy benefit managers outside the largescale opioid cases handled by Polster.

Cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer reached out to Optum Rx and Express Script for comment.

Pharmacy benefit managers are typically hired by governments, insurers or employers to facilitate prescription drug programs, with the goal of reducing costs for the insured.

The lawsuit, however, accuses the companies of doing the opposite. It alleges the businesses colluded with manufacturers to make opioids more available for pain treatment and by ignoring clear warning signs of addiction in patients. The companies did so to increase profits, the lawsuit said.

“Whether by colluding with manufacturers to make opioids more available as a form of pain treatment or by ignoring the mounting evidence of addiction and misuse in their own claims data, [pharmacy benefits managers’] role in creating and sustaining the opioid epidemic is largely hidden from public scrutiny but nevertheless facilitated the reckless promotion of opioids by manufacturers, the oversupply of opioid shipments by distributors and the irresponsible dispensing of prescription opioids by numerous pharmacies,” the lawsuit said.

Summit County from 2015 through 2021 had 1,236 overdoses related to opioids. During the same time frame, the county averaged 21.5 million doses of opioids prescribed each year, the lawsuit said.

The county’s medical examiner’s office saw such a surge in opioid deaths that it needed to use a mobile morgue provided by the state five times, the lawsuit said.

Summit County has received over $100 million in settlement money in opioid lawsuits. The money is earmarked for costs associated with spikes in police and ambulance calls, programs for residents who are addicted to opioids, education and helping children who are born addicted to opioids, among other uses.

Pharmacy benefit managers are also the subject of an unrelated Ohio Attorney General’s Office investigation launched in 2018 and a Federal Trade Commission investigation that began last year.