McKinsey pays millions of dollars in opioid settlement
Did McKinsey boost the sale of painkillers through misleading campaigns and thus contribute to the opioid crisis in the USA? In any case, the consulting firm has already had to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to settle lawsuits. Even a settlement will now be expensive for McKinsey.
The consulting firm McKinsey has agreed to a settlement with US health insurers and care plans in connection with opioids. According to the settlement reached in a federal court in San Francisco, the company will pay 78 million dollars to the plaintiffs. This is the latest of several settlements McKinsey has reached to resolve opioid-related lawsuits in the US.
The plaintiffs had accused the consulting firm of contributing to the opioid crisis by helping pharmaceutical companies such as Purdue Pharma to plan misleading marketing campaigns and boost sales of painkillers. The settlement must still be approved by a judge.
Paul Geller, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said the drug crisis was caused by an oversupply of dangerous addictive drugs and the settlement is aimed at "recovering some of the money that was spent on the over-prescribed pills." However, McKinsey did not admit any wrongdoing and said it still believed it had worked lawfully. In addition, in 2019, it committed to no longer advising clients in connection with opioid businesses.
Hundreds of thousands of opioid deaths in the USA
McKinsey has already paid 641.5 million dollars to settle lawsuits brought by federal prosecutors and 230 million dollars to settle lawsuits brought by local governments. The firm also settled with Native American tribes. According to US health authorities, around 645,000 people died from opioid overdoses in the US between 1999 and 2021.
Thousands of lawsuits have been filed by states, municipalities and Native Americans. They accused pharmaceutical companies of downplaying the risks of the painkillers. Pharmacies and retailers were accused of ignoring evidence of illegal trade in these drugs. The legal disputes led to settlements with pharmaceutical companies, retailers and pharmacy chains amounting to more than 50 billion dollars.
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McKinsey's settlement with US health insurers and care plans in the opioid case comes from their alleged involvement in helping pharmaceutical companies, such as Purdue Pharma, plan misleading marketing campaigns that boosted the sale of painkillers in the USA. The Justice Department in the USA is one of the entities that McKinsey has had to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to settle opioid-related lawsuits with.
Source: www.ntv.de
