McKinsey Fined Nearly $600 Million Over Their Role In The Opiod Crisis

[LorenzoS]

The consulting firm will not admit wrongdoing, according to the multistate settlement, but will agree to court-ordered restrictions on its work

The amount McKinsey is paying is substantially more than it earned from opioid-related work

Here is the heart of the problem. The penalty might be more than the revenue earned on the project but it's still small enough to be just a cost of doing business. Until the penalty becomes large enough to end the business, or better yet the C-suite executives are at risk of prison or personal bankruptcy, there will not be motivation enough to change behavior.

[okie john]

Here is the heart of the problem. The penalty might be more than the revenue earned on the project but it's still small enough to be just a cost of doing business. Until the penalty becomes large enough to end the business, or better yet the C-suite executives are at risk of prison or personal bankruptcy, there will not be motivation enough to change behavior.

Yep. They knew it was wrong and they did it anyway. The consequences should start with long prison sentences and personal financial ruin. Same with the mortgage crisis.


Okie John

[joshs]

I’m not sure what the parallels are for gun makers but I’d love to hear from @joshs on this in light of the PLCAA.

If you look at the Remington/Bushmaster case over Sandy Hook, the plaintiffs made similar arguments about marketing. The obvious difference being that opoid producers really did want as many people as possible to use their product, while the last thing gun manufacturers want is for a criminal to misuse their product. The PLCAA should be an absolute bar where gun manufacturers complied with the law and criminal misuse led to the injury, but courts have started to erode the PLCAA by applying generally applicable negligence, nuisance, or unfair trade practices statutes as the type of "predicate" statutes that can trigger an exception to the PLCAA. This exception was meant to limit protection under the PLCAA where a manufacturer or seller actually violated a firearms statute (knowingly selling to a prohibited person as the clearest example), not generally applicable liability laws. Doing so would allow that exception to eliminate any protection provided by the PLCAA.

[Shoresy]

Savage and appropriate

[Lon]

I was working narcotics when the opioid crisis began. I blame doctors just as much, if not more than pharma companies. They passed out scripts for oxys like they were candy with no real “treatment” alternatives.

[Wise_A]

If you look at the Remington/Bushmaster case over Sandy Hook, the plaintiffs made similar arguments about marketing. The obvious difference being that opoid producers really did want as many people as possible to use their product, while the last thing gun manufacturers want is for a criminal to misuse their product.

Well, that, and guns cause extremely few accidental deaths and injuries, but we know that opiods are addictive and thus harmful even when used correctly.

I was working narcotics when the opioid crisis began. I blame doctors just as much, if not more than pharma companies. They passed out scripts for oxys like they were candy with no real “treatment” alternatives.

I had a scrip pretty much thrown at me for very little more than "fell and got an owwie" I think regular people and doctors both have forgotten that some stuff should hurt. I took a couple Tylenol and a dose of HTFU. Yeah, I creaked around for a bit, but that's what you're supposed to do after an injury.

[Sensei]

I was working narcotics when the opioid crisis began. I blame doctors just as much, if not more than pharma companies. They passed out scripts for oxys like they were candy with no real “treatment” alternatives.

Like many things in medicine and life, it follows the Rule of 1/3’s - equal responsibility among the 1) doctors, 2) state-sponsored pharmaceutical industry, 3) the patients. All three groups knew the risks and pretended like they didn’t exist.

[Caballoflaco]

Some of the execs at these companies need to be thrown far far up under the jail where they’ll never get out.

Watch out Georgia and Alabama,” a pharmaceutical executive wrote at the height of the prescription opioid crisis. “There will be a mass exodus of Pillbillies heading north.”

In other emails cited by prosecutors, as reported by The Mountain State Spotlight, employees at pharmaceutical distributor AmerisourceBergen repeatedly mocked addicts as pillbillies and hillbillies; referred to Kentucky as “OxyContinville,” a twist on the Jimmy Buffett song “Margaritaville;” and even lampooned the “Beverly Hillbillies” theme song with a version in which Jed travels in search of pills

The “mass exodus of Pillbillies” comment came in an email by AmerisourceBergen executive Chris Zimmerman in 2011. The Mountain State Spotlight, a nonprofit news organization covering West Virginia, described Zimmerman as an executive whose responsibilities included overseeing compliance with laws governing distribution and helping identify suspicious orders.

Instead, emails that have emerged in a West Virginia court case show that Zimmerman and other AmerisourceBergen executives mocked both addicts and communities blighted by the operation of “pill mills” run by corrupt doctors. Zimmerman’s “exodus” comment came after Florida cracked down on pill mills in 2011; the point was that addicts would flock to other states where regulations hadn’t been tightened up yet.

https://www.al.com/news/2021/05/wave...-epidemic.html

[ccmdfd]

When will people learn not to say stupid things in emails???

[JRB]

A former member of one of my old units OD'd on oxy laced with fentanyl and died last week.

We weren't close but we knew each other, it was a smaller unit at the time we served together. He got blown up by an IED in AFG in 2011 or so, and then barely survived an aneurism and complicated surgery right after that. It was thought to be related to the blast.

Same old story now - he got med boarded out, fell into a VA that was short staffed and overworked, got prescribed Oxy and they never prescribe enough Oxy, it seems. So he went to the streets after getting hooked on it and got in over his head and on the wrong side of the law more than once.

You were kind of an asshole, Valles, but you deserved better. RIP bud, and I hope like hell you're haunting these rich pharma fucks if you're not somewhere better.