- Chief Compliance Officer and VP of Legal Affairs, Arrow Electronics
By 
Aaron Nicodemus2023-01-30T17:13:00
Retail pharmacy chain Walgreens agreed to pay $7 million to settle alleged violations of the False Claims Act (FCA) that it overbilled the state of Tennessee’s Medicaid insurance program for Hepatitis C medications and kept the proceeds even after it discovered an employee’s misconduct.
Before 2019, TennCare, the state’s Medicaid program, required prior authorization based on eligibility criteria for coverage of certain Hepatitis C direct-acting antiviral medications.
From 2014-16, a former pharmacist and store manager of a Walgreens in Kingsport, Tenn., falsified prior authorization requests for 65 TennCare patients so they could receive coverage for their Hepatitis C medications, the Department of Justice (DOJ) said Friday in a press release. The pharmacy chain retained the proceeds from the improper claims even after the scheme came to light, the DOJ said.
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Walgreens agreed to pay nearly $107 million to resolve allegations, first brought by two whisteblowers, that it improperly billed federal healthcare programs for prescriptions that were never picked up or delivered.
Cornerstone Healthcare Group will pay more than $21.6 million to settle allegations it filed false claims to Medicare by inflating the cost of services, billing for unauthorized services, and other violations initially brought forward by a whistleblower.
Spacelabs Healthcare agreed to pay $2.5 million as part of a settlement with the Department of Justice resolving allegations it overcharged the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs for medical devices.
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French defense and aviation contractor Thales Group is under investigation by authorities in the U.K. and France for allegedly participating in bribery and corruption.
Hedge fund manager Scott Bessent, named by Donald Trump on Friday as his nominee for Treasury Secretary, has a clear mandate to deregulate the financial markets should he take the helm.
