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

[okie john]

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/03/b...ettlement.html

McKinsey & Company, the consultant to blue-chip corporations and governments around the world, has agreed to pay nearly $600 million to settle investigations into its role in helping “turbocharge” opioid sales, a rare instance of it being held publicly accountable for its work with clients.

$478 million must be paid within 60 days and that's not all of the liability they face.

And in a 2017 slide presentation for Purdue, McKinsey laid out several options to shore up sales. One was to give distributors a rebate for every OxyContin overdose attributable to pills they sold. The slides are notable for their granular detail. For example, McKinsey estimated that 2,484 CVS customers would overdose or develop an opioid use disorder in 2019 from taking OxyContin. CVS said the plan was never implemented.

Even better, a couple of their executives emailed each other about destroying records.


Okie John

[UNK]

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/03/b...ettlement.html



$478 million must be paid within 60 days and that's not all of the liability they face.



Even better, a couple of their executives emailed each other about destroying records.


Okie John

About time. Not sure enough was levied however. Any jail sentences?

[DDTSGM]

I agree, not enough pain for these guys, they should be out of business and those complicit should be in jail, for a long time.

[BWT]

I know about opioids and drug addiction.

I am curious about what medical companies did to propagate this?

Not being sarcastic or baiting a trap.

I’m just curious what behaviors they exhibited that bypassed medical professionals, etc.

My concern not for this is just manufacturers being held liable for abuse of an item. I’m curious what they did in particular that did specifically damage folks.

Being a gun forum you can see why.

ETA:

I read most of the article. Rebates, loosening restrictions, illegal prescriptions, urging vendors with rebates.

Definitely looking to move inventory.

[gomerpyle]

I agree, not enough pain for these guys, they should be out of business and those complicit should be in jail, for a long time.

Agreed. McKinsey is supposed to be the best and the brightest. The partners, principles, and associates involved knew exactly what they were doing and the implications of their actions.

[snow white]

In my opinion 600 million is an insult and slap in the face to the family's and community's that have been destroyed by this, as well as the American tax payer who are the ones who ultimately bare the monetary burden. I think these are crimes against humanity.

[Mark D]

In my opinion 600 million is an insult and slap in the face to the family's and community's that have been destroyed by this, as well as the American tax payer who are the ones who ultimately bare the monetary burden. I think these are crimes against humanity.

This...

[okie john]

I am curious about what medical companies did to propagate this?

Not to be flippant, but they hired a marketing consultant to help them make money.

I’ve done some of this kind of work for tech and telecom companies. People like me get hired for two reasons. The first is that marketing has become so complex that people who run huge businesses don’t understand how to market them. We use their research or conduct our own, then recommend ways for them to boost sales of specific products to specific groups of people. Sometimes we also execute on that by creating campaigns, buying media, etc. If the company is big enough, then showing that you changed the right metric by a few tenths of a point can be a huge win.

The second reason is that something about the company is bad. Everybody usually understands the problem but you can get fired for speaking out. If bad news or an unpopular opinion comes from an outsider, then everyone can discuss it without risk. The worse it is, the more they pay the consultant to bear bad news.

I see both types in this case. Big Pharma knows exactly how addictive opioids are and they know it’s wrong to hand them out like candy. They also know that selling them is incredibly profitable. They just needed someone who could overlook the moral and ethical issues of writing a multi-year plan to flood with market with so many of them that hundreds of thousands of people would probably die.

I’m just curious what behaviors they exhibited that bypassed medical professionals, etc.

I’m not sure they needed to bypass anyone. Pain management has evolved over the decades toward drugging people in pain. If you’re a doc who has been trained to do that and you work in a culture that favors it, then Big Pharma just has to convince you to prescribe OxyContin instead of aspirin.

That's where marketing consultants come in. The article makes it sound like McKinsey helped Big Pharma create and execute a coherent, multi-level, multi-year plan to drive sales. Big Pharma probably shared that plan with the companies closest to it, maybe major distributors and retail chains. Those companies probably created their own plans based on the first plan, and shared them with the next tier of companies, and so on. Pretty soon every sales rep in the country is pushing docs to prescribe OxyContin, sales go up, and people die in the streets.

At any point in the chain, someone could have questioned what they were doing. Maybe that happened. But someone else decided to double down on that plan and the rest of them went along.

Ultimately, I see the mere presence of consultants as an attempted end run. I’m sure that in some Big Pharma shithead’s mind, this was all McKinsey’s idea so they’re to blame for what went wrong and Big Pharma should get to keep on doing what they do without recourse.

Except so many people died that it couldn’t happen that way.

My concern not for this is just manufacturers being held liable for abuse of an item. I’m curious what they did in particular that did specifically damage folks.

Being a gun forum you can see why.

Absolutely. My guess is that it’s not the actions themselves, but the fact that the people who did these things were fully aware of the potential for lethal harm if the standards for prescribing opioids were lowered.

For example, McKinsey estimated that 2,484 CVS customers would overdose or develop an opioid use disorder in 2019 from taking OxyContin. CVS said the plan was never implemented.

If that’s true, then neither McKinsey nor CVS can claim that they didn’t know people would die.

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.


Okie John

[Bucky]

On a side note, the ability now to get proper pain relief when you have a legitimate reason is frustrating. A year ago when I broke my foot, I was told to take Tylenol. I needed something a little stronger, if just to be able to take at night to reduce the pain enough to fall asleep.

It’s ironic where some some states are even considering legalizing heroin, but we want to severely restrict Vicodin.

[fixer]

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/03/b...ettlement.html



$478 million must be paid within 60 days and that's not all of the liability they face.



Even better, a couple of their executives emailed each other about destroying records.


Okie John

Wow. Thats pretty sick.

I've dealt with PWC a few times for major corporate transformations but never McKinsey.

I don't think this is all on McKinsey. Usually the consultant firm takes cues from the high level management of a company about overall direction.

In other words I don't think McKinsey cooked this up all on their own.

Just speculation on my part.

Its good to see the "co-conspirators" getting some accountability.