PHOENIX — Attorney General Kris Mayes sued two of the country’s largest pharmacy benefit managers Thursday, accusing Optum and Express Scripts of helping expand Arizona’s opioid supply for more than 20 years.
The consumer-fraud complaint was filed in Maricopa County Superior Court. Pharmacy benefit managers sit between insurers, drug makers, and pharmacies and help decide which drugs are covered and on what terms. Mayes’ office argues that role has drawn less scrutiny than the manufacturers and distributors already sued over the opioid epidemic.
The lawsuit says the companies worked with opioid makers to push the drugs, handed out material that played down addiction risk, and agreed not to use tools such as prior authorization that would have required a doctor to show a prescription was appropriate before it was filled. Richie Taylor, a spokesman for Mayes, told KJZZ the allegation is that the companies were trying to move as many opioid prescriptions as they could, as fast as they could.
A statement from Mayes’ office said that conduct increased how many opioids were available in Arizona, contributed to addiction, overdose, and death, and left the state with billions of dollars in health-care, emergency, and social costs. The complaint notes that thousands of Arizonans have died of opioid overdoses. It asks for restitution, civil penalties, corrective programs, and a court order stopping the practices the state describes.
Optum rejected the claims in a statement to KJZZ. The company called the suit an attempt to blame it for a crisis caused by others, said it did not contribute to the epidemic, and said it has worked for years on controls meant to limit opioid abuse and to support communities already hurt. Express Scripts had not answered KJZZ’s request for comment as of the station’s Saturday morning story.
The case does not, by itself, change what a pharmacy can dispense next week. It asks a Superior Court judge to decide whether these middlemen broke Arizona consumer-fraud law. Similar fights in other states have ended in settlements more often than in trials, but Mayes’ filing is the start of the Arizona case, not a judgment.