The CVS Scandals You Missed in 2024

It’s time for a 2024 New Years wrap-up! These were a blip on our 24 hr news cycle, and then subsequently buried. Here is all the legal trouble my employer had that they don’t want you to know.

Author’s note: Please feel free to use this article, in whole or in part, for your own work. Just cite me. This really needs to be more publicized. I only know about it because this stuff is on my radar.

2024 was a shitty year for CVS. They “lost money” (But their profits were up by 17% in 2024, to over 160 billion), their stock is down to “only” $45.47 per share. And there were numerous legal troubles.

In February of 2024, The Ohio Board of Pharmacy handed down an opinion on a case against CVS for the multiple issues with their short-staffing pharmacies, pushing quotas for vaccines, and causing massive levels of burnout in their pharmacists. I highly suggest reading this article in USA Today, and listen to the audio. This is from 2023, but it sets the stage for what I’m going to be discussing, and also gives some background into my personal experience with this company. It’s shocking. Here’s a quote:

“If you get your goal, nobody will come after you," Haidar said on the call, one of several recorded and shared with USA TODAY. "And many patients, they are ignorant. They don’t know what the flu is ... How are you going to convince them? How can you persuade them? That’s your job as a pharmacist.”

This is referring to quotas for vaccines. Pharmacists are routinely forced to push vaccines, and can be penalized or even terminated if they miss this quota. This is in addition to all of the other duties that pharmacists need to do to ensure patient safety. I highly suggest listening to the audio. It’s damning.

The response to the audio would be hilarious if it wasn’t so sad.

Haidar, who now leads a different team, told USA TODAY the recordings must have been altered and that he never threatened staff with discipline for falling short of vaccination goals. He also said they are not an accurate depiction of his leadership. When asked if he would like to listen to the recordings, Haidar declined.

And so, now that you have the background, let’s get into the lawsuits.

Ohio Board of Pharmacy Vs CVS, Case # 2063

Here is a link to the release from the ruling. I’m going to go into it and break down the most important findings here. Definitely check out the whole thing, and also this article in the Ohio Capital. Also, I am not at all a lawyer, I’m just doing my best to get this info out.

So, I highlighted some of the good bits. This case came about due to findings from 2021:

When Board of Pharmacy inspectors visited Canton store No. 2063 on Sept. 13, 2021, they found a pharmacy so understaffed that the inside counter was closed, the phone wasn’t working and the line of cars to the dive-through snaked around the side of the building. Stock — including controlled substances — hadn’t been shelved. The staff was so harried that it took inspectors 20 minutes to get somebody’s attention, according to the report, which CVS hasn’t disputed.

This was in the Ohio Capital write up. They were hit with a $250K fine, which is small peanuts compared to what they make, however. They can also lose their license to operate. That would be a massive, massive blow to their finances. Now, I’m trying to clarify if only the one store would not be allowed to operate, or CVS as a whole. If anyone reading can clarify that, let me know. They are also going to be watched like a hawk. The probationary period is at least three years too.

The store was in chaos because of short-staffing, according to the inspector. From the Capitol Journal,

In the pharmacy, inspectors also found phones that weren’t working properly, malfunctioning coolers, and a lack of controls over dangerous drugs.

This is a public health hazard. And CVS blames Covid, when that is not the case. Their short-staffing and lack of upkeep on the phone and climate control systems is downright dangerous. If a patient is unaware that their drugs have been compromised and takes the ineffective dose, that can wreak havoc on them. But CVS doesn’t care, they want your money.

The above highlighted is a super important provision. They know that CVS will retaliate in whatever way they can. If they do so, they face sanctions and other penalties. That’s because, as you know, the US has next to no worker protections. CVS loves penalizing anything and everything, so having that provision in there not only protects the pharmacists jobs, but also makes it easier to protect the public by speaking out.

Again, this isn’t Mcdonald’s. This is a chain pharmacy that provides medication to the public. And one of the largest ones to boot. When a person at Mcdonald’s makes a mistake, you just shrug and go on your way. If a pharmacist makes a mistake, you could have sever consequences.

The fact that more states haven’t investigated them is appalling. Good on Ohio for dropping the hammer.

That is the important bits, but like I said. I linked the full brief up top.

State of Ohio Board Of Pharmacy Vs CVS Part 2

Link to the full brief here.

This is the second case in Ohio in 2024. This verdict was rendered in Feb 29th. This resolves 27 cases in 22 stores where they were found to be noncompliant. A lot of the punishment is similar so this will be a shorter section.

As you can see, the provisions in this one are almost the same. But this is 23 stores in Ohio total that have been sanctioned. How many people did this affect? How many workers were stressed, burned out, and not in a great place to be handling medications? How many mistakes were made?

Again, CVS made a gross profit of 160 billon in 2024. Yet this is the direct result of cost-cutting measures that put the public in danger. Here is the list of settlements. You can look up more information. It has each individual case that was settled.

CVS Vs The DOJ

On December 13th, The DOJ of Rhode Island took up a case against CVS. That link is the legal document. It’s a long one, and I might go into it later but I’m not a lawyer so I don’t know if there’s much I could add. I might do a notes series with snippets or something. It’s a lot. So most of this info will be coming from articles. Everything will have a link.

Here is a write-up from an attorney’s office. I wanted to bring attention to the accusations here, because they are the same ones that we see throughout. From the article:

• Unrealistic labor expectations created unsafe staffing levels. Bonus structures improperly incentivized pharmacists to fill prescriptions quickly and sacrifice the proper exercise of corresponding responsibility.

• CVS failed to adopt methods to track and share with pharmacists at other CVS pharmacies instances where pharmacists refused to fill prescriptions due to unresolvable red flags.

• Corporate management intentionally failed to provide pharmacists with available data to adequately exercise corresponding responsibility.

• Complaints about patient and employee safety raised through the CVS ethics line and employee interviews were repeatedly ignored by corporate management.

As someone who has used the ethics line, this does not even remotely shock me. Much like HR, they exist to protect the company. Not the employees, and not the patients.

And so, a pattern emerges. Much like the other two cases, CVS is being accused of mismanagement of staff, safety concerns, and ignoring the law because it hurt their bottom line. This is common. Anyone who works at the store level can tell you. You can google it, and hundreds of stories will come up.

Now, this story may have gotten more attention, but between all of the mass shootings, it got buried. Our talking points, of course, were similar to the release after Brian Thompson was killed. “Don’t talk about it, don’t talk to the press, assure our members that everything is fine and dandy. Please ignore the man behind you with the knife at your back.”

Here is the official DOJ report.

The government’s complaint alleges that, from Oct. 17, 2013, to the present, CVS knowingly filled prescriptions for controlled substances that lacked a legitimate medical purpose, were not valid, and/or were not issued in the usual course of professional practice.

This is over 10 years of malpractice. They have been putting people at risk for 10 years. Let that sink in. And we’re just hearing about it. That’s because CVS is very good at hiding their misdeeds. Or they were, until it became something that’s too big to ignore. I think part of this is due to the outrage over our healthcare.

Let’s continue.

The complaint alleges that CVS’ violations resulted from corporate-mandated performance metrics, incentive compensation, and staffing policies that prioritized corporate profits over patient safety.

It also doesn’t help that CVS pays absolute shit. Here is a screenshot from Indeed.

By the way, you’re going to get $16. They don’t negotiate. That is unlivable. So of course pharmacists and techs are going to try to get bonuses. Because they can’t afford it. And also, don’t forget they are short-staffed, and salaried employees are abused so they don’t have to pay OT. Many pharmacists are essentially working off the clock. And no, I don’t care about salary vs hourly. If you work over 40 hours, you need to be paid extra. But they don’t.

Here is a link to a CNN article from December. The same pattern emerges here: CVS chose to push dangerous practices that are detrimental to the public health. From the article:

“Safety issues arise when one is dealing with medication and also being rushed to fulfill an order like McDonald’s,” one employee allegedly wrote. “CVS has concocted an assembly-line style of medication preparation and only cares about profits.”

The company continued to fill hundreds of prescriptions for one Alabama doctor even after multiple internal notes warned in 2015 that he was under investigation, the complaint said. That doctor was arrested in 2016.

It filled thousands of prescriptions for a Pennsylvania doctor despite internal warnings and online patient reviews saying he “writes scripts without seeing the patient” and is “a pill pusher, and a drunk,” the Justice Department said.

This is absolutely negligent. And as you know, CVS also owns Caremark and Aetna. The more prescriptions they fill, the more profit they get, ethics be damned. But of course, because CVS/Aetna made billions of dollars, they can sweep it under the rug. They don’t care about you. They want your money.

Please, reach out to your state’s Board of Pharmacy, Local and State reps, and even your member of Congress. Make a fuss to hold them accountable. Don’t let them hide in their google algorithms and money.

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