Express Scripts Fights to Keep Hawaii PBM Suit in Federal Court

Pharmacy benefit manager Express Scripts maintains that a federal judge incorrectly applied federal statute in remanding Hawaii’s case against the company and other entities managing prescription benefits to state court.

Judge Leslie E. Kobayashi of the US District Court for the District of Hawaii improperly disregarded in her April ruling that Hawaii’s lawsuit alleging the PBMs profited from artificially inflating the costs of prescription drugs “necessarily implicates the work Express Scripts performs as a federal contractor,” the company wrote in its opening brief filed in the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

Cigna Group‘s Express Scripts, which ...