Cvs Corp

Bergen Brunswig Corp. is selling most of a struggling pharmacy unit that has been a drag on the drug wholesaler's earnings, the firm's latest effort to reduce its debt and focus on its core wholesale drug distribution business. Orange-based Bergen said Wednesday that it has agreed to sell most of its Stadtlander specialty pharmacy unit to CVS Corp., the nation's largest drugstore chain, for $124 million in cash, a fraction of what Bergen paid for the unit 17 months ago.

Employees at one of the nation's largest drugstore chains must disclose personal health information -- including their weight -- or pay a $600-a-year fine, according to a published report. CVS Caremark Corp. is requiring workers to reveal the information to their company's insurance carrier or pay an extra $50 a month for health coverage, according to the Boston Herald. CVS could not immediately be reached for comment. But a spokesman told the newspaper that “our benefits program is evolving to help our colleagues take more responsibility for improving their health and managing health-associated costs.” Employees must reveal their weight, height, body fat and blood pressure, the paper reported.

CVS Caremark Corp. is being investigated by a multi-state task force looking into the consequences of the company's 2007 purchase of Caremark Rx Inc., Florida's attorney general's office said Wednesday. Florida is conducting a review of the merger that created the largest U.S. supplier of prescription drugs, the state attorney general's office said. Florida is working with other states, the office said. The Caremark unit provides pharmacy-benefits management to employers and accounted for about half of the company's 2009 sales of $98.7 billion.

California's largest private physician practice has become one of the first doctor groups in the nation, and almost certainly the largest, to make prices for its medical procedures widely available to consumers.

SACRAMENTO - State pharmacy regulators have opened an investigation into reports that CVS Caremark Corp. refilled prescriptions and billed insurance companies without patients' consent. Virginia Herold, executive officer of the California Board of Pharmacy, said Tuesday that investigators were probing complaints about the refill practices of the country's largest drugstore chain after Walgreen Co. Herold said the complaints concerning "CVS and refills" were similar to allegations raised in four Los Angeles Times reports published in the last three months.

The nation's largest pharmacy chain will pay a record fine for illegally selling large amounts of a key methamphetamine ingredient to criminal traffickers, a problem that prosecutors say led to a surge in production of the widely abused drug in California. CVS Pharmacy Inc. agreed to pay a $75-million fine and forfeit $2.6 million in profits on the unlawful sales of pseudoephedrine in California and Nevada in 2007 and 2008, according to federal prosecutors based in Los Angeles. The penalty is the largest for a civil violation of the Controlled Substances Act, a 40-year-old law that is more often aimed at street dealers and narcotics traffickers.

Albertsons Inc. announced that the Federal Trade Commission had approved the $11.1-billion sale of the company to a consortium led by Minnesota-based grocer Supervalu Inc. and drugstore chain CVS Corp. Shareholders of Albertsons and Supervalu are expected to approve the deal. Albertsons shares climbed 19 cents to $25.79.

Chain drugstores that have opposed a Bush administration plan to give seniors a pharmacy discount card said they would offer their own card to link various price cuts given by pharmaceutical companies. No drug companies have signed on to the National Assn. of Chain Drug Stores card, but the group, which represents CVS Corp., Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and other major drugstore chains, said many firms have expressed interest.