$26 Billion Settlement Offer in Opioid Lawsuits Gains Wide Support.
Article from NY Times
Doctor Henry Ji, Sorrento therapeutics and company, should get their non opioid pain killers through, hopefully easily with the FDA because of situations like this. Read on.
Three distributors and a drug manufacturer have proposed a deal that a majority of states and negotiators for small governments finally seem to like.
The McKesson Corporation, based in San Francisco, would pay $8 billion of the settlement alone. Credit...Anastasiia Sapon for The New York Times
By Jan Hoffman
Nov. 5, 2020
The three major drug distributors and a large drug manufacturer are closing in on a $26 billion deal with state and local governments that would end thousands of lawsuits over the companies’ role in the opioid epidemic, according to people close to the negotiations and new company filings.
The deal is $4 billion more than an offer made a year ago, that was rejected by many states and municipalities. A major difference in the latest offer is $2 billion earmarked for private lawyers who represent cities, counties, and some states.
If the deal is finalized, four of the most prominent defendants in the behemoth, nationwide litigation — McKesson, Cardinal Health, AmerisourceBergen and Johnson & Johnson — would no longer be at risk from future opioid lawsuits by these governments. Other drug manufacturers and the national pharmacy chains are still facing thousands of such cases.
Most of the money from the settlement deal is intended to help pay for treatment and prevention programs in communities ravaged by addiction and overdoses. From 1999 through 2018, 232,000 Americans died from overdoses of prescription opioids, according to the latest numbers from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Addiction to the painkillers also triggered an epidemic of abuse of illegal opioids like heroin, contributing to an avalanche of deaths, crime and soaring health care costs.
Litigation over the drug industry’s responsibility has been bitterly fought, resulting in a handful of settlements and the declaration of bankruptcy by some drug manufacturers, including Purdue Pharma, which just reached a settlement of federal criminal and civil charges.
The three distributors announced the outlines of their settlement offers in quarterly earnings reports released Tuesday and Thursday. Johnson & Johnson announced its portion in a filing last month.
The distributors shipped more than three-quarters of the nation’s opioids to pharmacies, rarely raising red flags even when quantities were wildly disproportionate to a store’s local population, according to federal data. Over 10 years, for example, the companies shipped nearly 21 million prescription painkillers to two pharmacies four blocks apart in a West Virginia town with a population of 2,900.
The latest deal is being brokered under the shadow of two major trials tentatively scheduled for January, which the companies are hoping to avoid. Unlike last year’s smaller settlement offer, which was witheringly rejected by many states but especially by lawyers negotiating for thousands of counties, cities and tribes, this offer is being widely lauded.
