And who's going to jail?
Does anyone have any evidence of what proportion of addicts became addicted to prescription drugs and what proportion started out on street drugs.
Without a doubt, state and federal regulators should have identified pill mill doctors who were overprescribing. The distribution system should have had monitoring when pharmacies were dispensing massive quantities far in excess of expected need. Medicaid, when expanded to able bodied childless adults, should have been monitoring spending on opioids.
But it seems incredibly implausible that a substantial proportion of those addicted to opioids became addicted because they were overprescribed.
@ebmem
This is it:
"With the more conservative method, 17 087 prescription opioid–involved deaths occurred in 2016, of 63, 337. Rates of prescription opioid–involved deaths estimated with the traditional method may have been inflated in recent years because of the increase in death rates involving synthetic opioids (e.g., fentanyl)." NCBI
Of course, that doesn't mean those were the people who had obtained the original "prescription,' that figure is much lower.
$19 Billion over 30 years from the compounded interest invest of the Sackler’s $18 billion dollar personal fortune from just Purdue along would pay that bill. In other words, all three companies combined fortunes invested over thirty years with yearly dividend payments probably doesn’t even begin to touch the wealth they earned. They knowingly killed thousands of people through selling heroine. Jail is the right option first.
3
The drug companies are still getting away with murder. 50 billion is a mere slap on the wrist. Let's factor in the cost of suffering of the families of the victims. The ripple effect on society and small communities at large that have been shredded by opioid use. Doctors and pharma companies that pushed these drugs with the reassurance that they were not habit forming. Why aren't some of these corporate CEOs in prison doing time, while the street corner pusher gets 15 years to life. It's shameful. And The opioid epidemic continues....
6
That is $31,000 for person who died of opioids over the last 10 years. I suppose that is the way we value the people that got addicted.
5
It is exactly like the tobacco settlement. The shareholders and executives keep their freedom, jobs, and bonuses. The addicted victims pay the settlement as increased prices on future purchases.
I’m unclear on how charging the victims will punish the companies that behaved badly.
11
Given the significance of the ongoing harm done across the nation by the major opioid distributors, it takes incredible nerve for their attorneys to dictate settlement terms which would effectively destroy the legitimate claims of many state and local governments who are plaintiffs in other actions.
Beyond the fact that the big players on the defense appear to be seeking an exit for a bargain price, they want to stretch out the payments long enough to make the deal a relative pittance.
The best approach is the one recommended by Federal District Court Judge Dan Polster in Cleveland. This is the kind of case for which Multidistrict Litigation (MDL) is the answer, and Judge Polster was selected to preside by the MDL Judicial Panel in Washington.
I am not an expert, but before I retired from the practice of law, I tried some MDL cases, and I also had dealings in other settings with a few of the individuals mentioned in this article, including Judge Polster.
The parties deserve finality, and the surviving family members of overdose victims need closure. Equally important, concluding these cases will help Congress and various agencies come up with laws and regulations to reduce the chance of America being put through a similar ordeal in the future.
3
Where is the accountability?
The leadership of these companies should be tried, convicted, jailed, and banned from commerce. Drug kingpins.
12
I'd settle for some senior executives doing time in prison. No one should be immune from the law because the company they work for can write a big check.
8
Indict the owners and the board of these companies for murder, that should hasten a settlement.
7
States, cities, and counties should collectively say no to this offer. It clearly will not impact the distributors in any meaningful way. All that does is slightly raise the cost of future bad behavior, which you can bet they will engage in. At least one of them was already under a regulatory memorandum of understanding that it violated anyway.
Hold out for a trial. Depositions. The pubic needs to see what these companies actually did. And the idea that, gosh, we're profitable, but we don't have a lot of cash on hand, boo hoo...
Ridiculous. Maybe they can pay settlements in stock. If you don't make the people at the very top pay, painfully, for what they've done, be prepared to see more of it.
5
@Kay
Hold a trial. Get a huge judgement. The legal costs along with the cost of the judgement will be paid by consumers of drugs in the future, as well as the insurance payments of those not taking drugs or the employers providing health insurance.
The hired guns will get their share of the bounty. The judgement will be used to increase the wages of civil servants, but will not go to fund their pension shortfalls.
2
The worst part of all this is that nobody claims responsibility for abject lawlessness of these corporations over the taxpayer. The $ that fatten these corporations asset side of the balance sheet came from insurance companies who were of course getting that from us the taxpayer (either through our premiums or government subsidy other tax monies). Now when they admit that what they did was only trying to increase profits by sending lethal amounts of their legalized heroin into communities, we don't see any punishment for their negligence? What we see is that they will take the same funds provided by us the tax payer and give that back into the state and not even the communities that they harmed. Do we not have a government anymore that will look out for those whose lifeblood is your very existence?
One of the few issues in which our national government may find a real consensus to act: throw the money launderers out of the temple
No.
States should not have control of this money at any point in the process. It should flow directly to clinics, hospitals, drug rehab providers and the families of the victims.
And not one of the heads of these filthy, murderous companies should be walking around free. They must be stripped of everything that blood money bought, including their freedom.
5
Another blatant sellout. I presume the state AG's will be making their cut sometime in the short future. Not to mention any judges OK'ing this as there is no other motive to approve such a pathetic deal.
So about 1 billion a year for 18 years??? This is justice?
1
Gigantic, drug dealing kingpins that have murdered close to half a million Americans. Nothing more, nothing less.
1
A billion a year? Is that a joke?
4
In times of national crisis we must rally around our wealthy people and corporations so that we have cruel overlords in the future. Where would we be if all our wealthy people moved to Russia, where the rich are not taxed at all and Putin is a stable genius who is also a very strong leader. We know this because the truth speakers at FOX and their advertisers tell us so.
These dead people don't need money now. It should stay in the hands of the jobs creators.
1
The way this "deal" is constructed, it only represents a tiny % of earnings over an 18 year period.
This says it all:
"At a January earnings call to investors, Steven H. Collis, chairman of the board of AmerisourceBergen, was asked whether the company needed to accumulate a war chest to bear the brunt of the opioid settlement.
Mr. Collis responded: “We don’t feel the need at all,” explaining that although the aggregate amount seemed hefty, it was divided among three distributors and spread over 18 years, and so would not have a big impact on his company."
2
So the attorneys line up at the pig trough. How much of this money is going to be targeted to treat opiod addicts. How much to be used for education and public service announcements or is this money going to disappear like the tobacco settlement. If the settlement is not painful enough for these companies I suggest that we squeeze them much harder.
4
This will just end up as an additional cost added on to the drugs these companies sell over the next 18 years
1
Part of the issue was that the DEA was supposed to provide guidance to distributors on suspicious order monitoring (SOM), but dragged their feet for YEARS. Distributors cannot share order data with one another as that would be an anticompetitive trade practice. Pharmacies split their orders across multiple distributors to avoid being flagged. The DEA’s role in this crisis still merits closer examination.
5
A vast majority of Americans who die from drug abuse are suffering; some psychologically, some physically, and some emotionally. No amount of bankrupt companies will alleviate their suffering, unless the government and society find a way to understand and mitigate the pain of those suffering, we will find ourselves in the same position a few years down the road. In fact, recent statistics show people have moved from opioids to heroine (fentanyl) or methamphetamine to cope. Society has to stop looking for a supposed villain and look in the mirror at a systemic problem that needs to be addressed.
9
Our Calvinistic American approach is to deny or even justify suffering. We do everything we can to show we like suffering (especially somebody else’s) and hate to do anything about it. If you suffer, it is your own fault and you deserve no respite or sympathy. All the rest is lying window dressing. For example, we make a big deal of drug use or alcoholism, when the underlying issue is suffering, as though the depredations of addiction have no cause other than low morals and weak wills, enabling criminal greed. It’s all much easier that way, and those who are blessed by a comfortable and happy life can feel morally superior instead of sympathetic.
3
Allan J. Don’t tell me there’s no supposed “villain”, the pharmaceutical industry including Purdue Pharma & the Sackler Family acted as a conduit to an addiction cycle that has morphed into ever greater and more dangerous drugs. This was a willful act on the part of doctors, pharmacies, distributors and the pharmaceutical industry that supplied them. Addictive drugs became like candy to be handed out to often unknowing patients and return great wealth to all the respective players. The Sacklers alone took out more than 12 “billion” dollars from Perdue Pharma. This proposed settlement doesn’t even come close to meeting the overall national needs nor significantly claw back the profits this predatory drug abuse scheme generated. So sorry no, there was and is a litany of “villains” who have profited and continue to profit from the opioid “crisis”. Any settlement that doesn’t cover the real costs of this crisis nor holds the individuals who willfully created it accountable is inadequate. Blaming “society” is reductionist at best, doesn’t bring about anything resembling justice and should be rejected.
4
@Allen J.
What is desperately needed are "hybrid" or "multispecialty" clinics that deal patients who have chronic pain and who are also addicted receive appropriate care. This requires a pain management specialist who works with people on higher doses of opioids (something which is rare) and addiction specialists along with if needed psychologists to treat depression etc. Unfortunately the opioid crisis continues because once someone shows signs of "aberrant" drug use, the pain specialist drops them like a "hot potato." Pain physicians are increasingly leaving opioid managment to internists because even though they specialize in the area of pain, they are afraid of the DEA coming in and pulling their license if there is a bad outcome. So although opioid prescriptions have dropped 30%, deaths have only dropped 5% because these folks who are addicted now seek their medications on "the street.' Most opioid deaths are due to hybrid overdose of prescription and non-prescription drugs. This will require a huge amount of money to have these mutlipspecialty clinics in place - similar I believe to what was spent on AIDS initially which is far more than this settlement. People are looking for someone to blame and I personally believe a lot of this is the governments (1)slow response to having these hybrid multispecialty clinicsin place and (2)regulations calling for closer monitoring systems in place and "hotlines" for physicians to call and/or "crash" teams to help these people.
1
1.2 billion dollars to the lawyers. Welcome to America.
Personally, I'd rather see the money spent on developing vaccines and treatments for use against coronavirus, than as payment to plaintiffs' lawyers.
2
The fact that Mr. Collis stated that this deal would not have a big impact on his company tells me that the settlement is not appropriate to its purpose.
32
Our Republican-run state government has yet to even pass laws to set up a prescription drug monitoring program - the last in the nation to lack one. Yet they are also on board to accept the settlement, even though the local jurisdictions are not. The state Republicans can't wait to get their hands on the money and put it to some use that will enhance their position.
It has been two years since medical marijuana was legalized by initiative petition, yet there still are no dispensaries. Also passed by initiative petition an Amendment to the state constitution that would eliminate gerrymandering and place sever restrictions on lobbying and dark money in political campaigns. Although it overwhelmingly passed, the provisions have not been enacted; not only that, but the Republicans have had the gall to put forth legislation to change the Amendment before it has even been enacted.
Our state legislature is pretty much a disgrace.
12
If a final settlement is reached, it will begin to deliver relief almost immediately. That, of course, is its strongest recommendation. However, with the uncountable thousands of sticky fingers grasping for the flow of cash, the chances for any just end to this epidemic are slim indeed. The interests of the victims will not prevail.
21
I have no reason that sometime in the future the companies will claim bankruptcy to get out from under the deal.I also see no provision for jail time for any of the heads of these corporations. Why not?
22
@John Lusk
I still advocate for murder charges on all executives and salespeople. And the doctors who were complicit for that matter.
2
The only honest solution is to make them operate on a non profit basis for the next 20 years and to turn over all of what would be profits to the states and Feds. That of course includes reducing executive compensation down to rational less than 6 figure levels.
23
The problem with every “settlement” regarding the opioid crisis is two-fold.
First, the amounts of fines and other financial penalties are paltry in the face of the economic costs in destroyed lives and livelihoods. They become insulting when considering the pain and suffering of the direct victims, their families, and their communities. Adding to that insult is the fact that these financial penalties become merely costs on the balance sheets of these corporations. In some cases, just the cost of doing business.
The second problem relates to that business as usual approach to fines and financial penalties. The real injustice is that no one responsible by overt action or knowing inaction is serving time in prison. Those at the tops of corporate pyramids may feel some financial inconvenience, but will never be threatened with time behind bars.
As a nation, we need to stop this winking at white-collar crime. These criminals become habituated to putting the costs against profits only. They need to lose their freedom as a fitting penalty for killing 400,000 Americans.
40
Case in point, quoting from this article:
At a January earnings call to investors, Steven H. Collis, chairman of the board of AmerisourceBergen, was asked whether the company needed to accumulate a war chest to bear the brunt of the opioid settlement.
Mr. Collis responded: “We don’t feel the need at all,” explaining that although the aggregate amount seemed hefty, it was divided among three distributors and spread over 18 years, and so would not have a big impact on his company.
4
This deal sounds like it is going too easy on these distributors, as supported by the investor conference calls. The money is needed now to support treatment and prevention, not spread out over 18 years.
States cannot cram a settlement down on the municipalities. Agencies at the municipal and state level have been sharing the burden, so they both have to agree on a settlement. However, local police and EMS (and county coroners) and social services are the ones on the front lines. It's too bad municipalities have to hire outside lawyers who have to be paid, but that is a fact of life.
14