Attorney General Anne Lopez announced that Hawai‘i has joined a settlement with Walgreens Boots Alliance, Inc. and Walgreen Co., alongside 49 other attorneys general. The agreement requires Walgreens to pay $97.8 million to address allegations of unlawful billing practices involving government health care programs.
The settlement resolves claims from two lawsuits: the Turck Civil Action and the Jacob Civil Action. These suits allege that between 2009 and 2020, Walgreens billed Medicare, Medicaid, and other programs for prescriptions never collected by patients. This practice allegedly resulted in Walgreens receiving millions for uncollected prescriptions.
Following these lawsuits, Walgreens enhanced its billing systems to prevent future occurrences of such billing issues. As part of the settlement, Walgreens received credit for self-disclosing certain claims and had previously refunded $66.3 million related to these claims. The total recovery for all Medicaid programs is $9.6 million, with Hawai‘i receiving $3,524.83.
The investigation was conducted by a team from the National Association of Medicaid Fraud Control Units (NAMFCU), in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Justice and United States Attorneys’ Offices in Texas and Florida. Representatives from Wisconsin, California, Texas, Maine, Oregon, and Massachusetts were involved.
Landon M.M. Murata from Hawai‘i's Medicaid Fraud Control Unit (MFCU) and Judy Mohr Peterson from the Med-QUEST Division signed the agreement on behalf of Hawai‘i.
“This is a significant win in the fight against healthcare fraud in our country," said Murata. "We appreciate all the hard work and dedication of our federal and state partners who made this settlement possible."
Hawai‘i's MFCU investigates provider fraud against Medicaid as well as abuse or neglect within board and care facilities across the state.