McKesson says potential opioid settlement proposal raised to up to $21 billion:
McKesson, along with AmerisourceBergen ABC.N and Cardinal Health CAH.N, had proposed in October last year paying a combined $18 billion to resolve the 3,000-plus lawsuits, with the drugmaker Johnson & Johnson JNJ.N paying $4 billion.
[...] The lawsuits were largely filed by states, counties and cities and sought to hold the companies responsible for an opioid addiction epidemic that according to U.S. government data resulted in 450,000 overdose deaths from 1997 to 2018.
That proposal, part of a settlement framework negotiated with four state attorneys general, met resistance from lawyers for local governments and several states, leading to further talks. J&J on Oct. 13 said it would now contribute $5 billion.
McKesson in a quarterly report said that under the new $21 billion settlement framework proposed by attorneys general, the San Francisco-based company would pay about $8 billion over 18 years.
The three distributors would also be required to make changes to their programs to guard against the diversion of drugs for illicit purposes, McKesson said.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 04 2020, @02:35AM
Someone do the math -- is it worth paying $21B over 18 years versus receiving hundreds of billions for decades?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 04 2020, @02:40AM (1 child)
And is there a correlation between opioid use, and the rise of Trump voters?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 04 2020, @05:12AM
But why won't they all die dammit?!
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Wednesday November 04 2020, @03:57AM (3 children)
That wasn't the big problem! The really big problem was people taking their legally prescribed pills, getting hooked, and switching to heroin or fentanyl when the pills ran out, and then overdosing and in all too many cases dying. And the reason the manufacturer was responsible was that they were trying to maximize the number of pills they sold, so they were working to convince doctors that their pills were safe when they knew they weren't. It's not that the pills were being diverted so much as the completely legal use of the pills was killing people. And they knew it. And they hid that fact to make some money.
That makes them no better than the street drug dealers, as far as I'm concerned.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 04 2020, @04:05AM
We did, that is how we got the current little shop of horrors.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by MIRV888 on Wednesday November 04 2020, @07:36AM
I disagree. There used to be a flood of pain / recreational pills on the black market back in the 90's - early 2000's. Not just Oxy's, but percacet, lortabs, Xanax, Valium, and opiates of all sorts. I have seen dental opiate cough syrup with codeine and lortab sold (with multiple refills). When this flood finally dried up, heroin was waiting in the wings.
The pendulum has swung the other way. Now if you get a painful injury or procedure, they will give you very few, if any, narcotic pain medication. If you ask for more because you are still in pain, that is drug seeking behavior. Now non recreational drug using people are left with pain that can be aleived, but will not be because 'war on drugs'.
America is really bad at moderation. This is a shining example of why you don't want a profit motive for medicine.
(Score: 1) by jrbrtsn on Wednesday November 04 2020, @02:42PM
There were also doctors who prescribed obscene quantities of legitimate opioids, which were often later sold on the black market. There is an excellent documentary on Netflix, "The Pharmacist", about one pharmacist's personal battle to expose the prescription opioid problem.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 04 2020, @04:00AM
So I would take it that this number isn't the one taken when the DEA got the evidence, but rather the number after they sat on their ass for a decade to run up the settlement numbers?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 04 2020, @03:58PM
Apparently "Starmine" still rates JNJ as 7.2 (out of 10), and the consensus is that they will make $4,817,553,690 in earnings this quarter.