Mount Vernon clinic fined over black market medications

MOUNT VERNON, Wash. – A Mount Vernon medical practice will have to pay hefty fines for prescribing black market medicine.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Seattle says the Skagit Family Health Clinic imported birth control medications that had not been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

The clinic now owes $120,000 in total to the federal and state governments in a settlement for unlawfully importing those medications from a foreign source.

Under the settlement, the clinic will pay $72,000 to the state and just over $48,000 to the federal government.

The money will reimburse the governments for their share of costs paid on Medicaid claims between 2015 and 2020.