From the AP:

Pharmacy benefits manager Express Scripts has agreed to pay $9.5 million in an agreement with 28 states over switching patients’ cholesterol drug brands, supposedly to control costs.

St. Louis-based Express Scripts Inc. will pay $9.3 million of the total to the states and the District of Columbia, to settle litigation by attorneys general alleging Express violated consumer protection laws.

Lynn Solomon is a spokeswoman for Montana Attorney General Mike McGrath. She said Thursday that Montana will receive $165,000 from the settlement.

The agreement includes another $200,000, to cover payments of no more than $25 each to individual patients. The payments will help defray the cost of physician visits and tests, linked to switches between rival brands of cholesterol-controlling drugs known as statins.

The agreement resolving a 4-year investigation of St. Louis-based Express Scripts follows a similar $38.5 million multistate settlement in February with a rival benefits manager, Caremark, and a 2004 drug-switching settlement with Franklin Lakes, N.J.-based Medco Health Solutions Inc.

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