Walmart pays $1.65 million to settle fraud claims
Walmart has paid $1.65 million to settle claims that it defrauded California’s Medi-Cal program by collecting payments for unneeded or unapproved drugs, the U.S. Justice Department announced Friday.
The retailer, which has pharmacies in 283 stores in California, was accused of billing Medi-Cal for drugs after misrepresenting doctors’ assessments of the need for the medications.
According to the lawsuit, filed by a former Sacramentoarea Walmart pharmacist in 2014 and joined by the state and federal governments, the pharmacies falsely certified that the patients’ doctors had determined the drugs were appropriate for the patients’ conditions, after assessing their safety, effectiveness and cost.
The suit said Walmart failed to confirm and document the doctors’ supposed diagnoses in some cases and, in other cases, billed Medi-Cal for drugs that were not prescribed for purposes approved by the program.
The former pharmacist, Glenn Dabek, will receive $264,000 under a federal whistle-blower law. The rest of the settlement goes to the state and federal governments, which fund Medi-Cal.
“These Medi-Cal regulations are essential to protect both patients and limited health care funding,” Phillip Talbert, the U.S. attorney in Sacramento, said in a statement.
The settlement contains no admission of wrongdoing. Ragan Dickens, a spokesman for Walmart, said the company disagrees with the allegations in the suit but decided to settle “in the best interest of the company.”