By Jonathan Sempel @ Reuters.com, Dec. 17

NEW YORK - CVS Health Corp (CVS.N) and its Omnicare unit were sued on Tuesday by the U.S. government, which accused them of fraudulently billing Medicare and other programs for drugs for older and disabled people without valid prescriptions.

The Department of Justice joined whistleblower litigation accusing Omnicare of violating the federal False Claims Act for illegally dispensing drugs to tens of thousands of patients in assisted living facilities, group homes for people with special needs, and other long-term care facilities.

According to a civil complaint filed in Manhattan federal court, Omnicare would often assign new numbers to prescriptions after the original prescriptions expired or ran out of refills.

The government said this enabled Omnicare to bill Medicare Medicaid, and Tricare, which serves military personnel, for hundreds of thousands of drugs, under what the company internally called “rollover” prescriptions, from 2010 to 2018 [....]