Dive Brief:

A federal judge has ordered CVS Caremark to pay almost $290 million in damages and penalties after a whistleblower proved the pharmacy benefit manager overcharged Medicare for prescription drugs.

On Tuesday, Judge Mitchell Goldberg of Pennsylvania’s eastern district court tripled the damages he’d previously ordered Caremark to pay to $285 million, and tacked on a $4.9 million civil fine.

CVS — which tried and failed to convince Goldberg to decrease the penalty — said it plans to appeal the ruling.

Dive Insight:

The case against Caremark stretches back more than a decade. In 2014, a whistleblower accused the PBM of knowingly misrepresenting the cost of drugs at Walgreens and Rite Aid stores, causing Medicare prescription drug plans, including Aetna, to inflate how much t

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