Attorney General Jeff Jackson Announces $40 Million Settlement with Grocery Chain Owner Over Inflated Drug Prices

North Carolina Attorney General Jeff Jackson announced a $40 million multistate settlement resolving fraud allegations against Ahold Delhaize, the international grocery retailer that owns Food Lion, Giant, Hannaford, and Stop & Shop pharmacy operations. North Carolina will receive $503,460 in restitution and other recoveries as its share of the settlement. The allegations center on Ahold Delhaize's prescription savings programs, which offered members discounted prices on prescription drugs. Under Medicare Part D, Medicaid, and TRICARE rules, those discounted prices were required to be reported as the pharmacies' "usual and customary" prices on claims submitted to those programs, because usual and customary prices directly determine the reimbursement amounts paid to pharmacies. Instead of reporting the discounted member prices as usual and customary, the supermarket pharmacies allegedly reported inflated usual and customary prices on claims submitted to Medicare Part D, Medicaid, and TRICARE. As a result, those federal healthcare programs paid more than they should have for prescription drugs dispensed to program beneficiaries. The settlement resolves a whistleblower lawsuit originally filed in the United States District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania. The National Association of Medicaid Fraud Control Units coordinated the multistate investigation, with the North Carolina Department of Justice and the attorneys general of Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Virginia working alongside the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Western District of Pennsylvania.