Two retail pharmacy giants have been sued in separate class action lawsuits for their alleged role in soaring prescription drug prices—an indication that plaintiffs lawyers may be assuming a role traditionally left to legislators.

In complaints filed on Monday and Wednesday, consumers accused CVS Health of Woonsocket, Rhode Island, and Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc. of Deerfield, Illinois, respectively, of colluding with pharmacy benefit managers to sell certain generic drugs at a higher cost if they are purchased with insurance.

Pharmacy benefit managers, or PBMs, are middlemen in the pharmaceutical industry that process prescriptions for the insurance companies that pay for the drugs. In the suit against CVS, filed in the federal court in Rhode Island, the lead plaintiff, Megan Schultz, claims she was charged $165.68 for a generic drug under her insurance that would have cost only $92 had she paid cash for it without using insurance. That's because, according to the complaint, CVS owns a PBM that determines which pharmacies are in a network to a cut of the drug sales.