The parents of Cole Schmidtknecht last month (January 21) filed a lawsuit against WBA, a Walgreens pharmacy in Wisconsin and pharmacy benefit manager (PBM) OptumRx over their son’s death from an asthma attack after he was unable to pay for his prescription due to a sudden price hike.
Shanon Schmidtknecht and William Schmidtknecht filed the civil action complaint at the US district court for the eastern district of Wisconsin following their son’s death at the start of 2024.
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According to the lawsuit, Schmidtknecht – who had a “medical history of chronic asthma” – went to his local OptumRx-Walgreens pharmacy in January 2024 to pick up his prescription for an asthma inhaler, which was usually “no more than about $66.86”.
“[But he] was advised by the Walgreens defendants that his medication was no longer covered by his insurance and that his Advair Diskus preventative inhaler would cost him $539.19 out of pocket,” the document said.
The 22-year-old “could not afford this unexpected expense” and was forced to “[leave] Walgreens without filling his prescription”, it added.
“Beyond help”
“Despite the clear requirements under Wisconsin law, OptumRx never provided Cole with 30 days’ notice” that his inhaler would no longer be covered by his insurance from 2024 onwards, the document claimed.
And Walgreens did not provide Schmidtknecht with any “affordable workarounds to obtain his usual inhaler”, nor did it offer him a “generic alternative”, contact Optum Rx “to request an exception” or provide him with a “free or discounted” inhaler he could use until contacting his physician, it said.
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“In fact, Walgreens…did not take any steps to attempt to help [him] obtain the medication that he relied upon to control his asthma,” it added.
Schmidtknecht spent the following five days “relying solely on his old ‘rescue’ (emergency) inhaler to limit his symptoms” as he “repeatedly struggled to breathe”, according to the lawsuit.
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And after a “severe asthma attack”, he was taken to hospital by his roommate but “became unresponsive and pulseless in the car”, it said.
He spent the next six days in an intensive care unit on a ventilator, but doctors sadly declared that he was “beyond help” and “despite their best efforts, [he] never woke up again”.
“On January 21 2024, Cole’s parents agreed to withdraw life supporting care and [he] was pronounced dead”, the filing said.
“Grievous and outrageous”
The lawsuit accuses WBA and OptumRx of negligence and seeks punitive damages, stating that the PBM “had a duty to not artificially inflate prescription drug prices for medications...making them so unaffordable that patients could not obtain the medications their physicians prescribed”.
The “negligence” of Walgreens and OptumRx and their employees “was a direct and proximate cause of the injuries and damages” Schmidtknecht’s parents suffered, it said.
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It alleges that their conduct was “grievous and outrageous” and was an example of “intentional disregard” for patients’ rights.
C+D approached WBA and OptumRx for comment.
Trading turmoil
It comes as a US government report last month found that three of the US’s largest PBMs, including OptumRx, “hiked costs” of “lifesaving drugs” including cancer and HIV treatments by “thousands of percent” between 2017 and 2022.
Also last month, the US government filed a nationwide lawsuit alleging that WBA “knowingly filled millions of prescriptions that lacked a legitimate medical purpose”.
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Meanwhile, it was revealed last week that the rumoured talks for WBA to “sell itself” to a private equity firm were “unlikely to result in a deal”, causing its share prices to tumble.
And the company last week announced that its directors are “suspending the company’s cash dividend historically paid to stockholders on a quarterly basis” for the first time in 92 years.
