Attorneys General for 47 have reached a $573 million settlement McKinsey & Company.
Officials said, "The settlement resolves investigations into the consulting firm’s work advising opioid companies on how to promote and profit from their drugs. Connecticut was part of a 10-state executive committee that negotiated the settlement. This is the first multistate settlement to result in substantial payments directly to the states to address and abate the opioid epidemic."
Connecticut Attorney William Tong said the state will receive $7,513,087.22, which will be used to abate the opioid epidemic. An initial payment of $6.2 million will be paid to Connecticut in the first year, with the remainder paid over four years.
Purdue Pharma, the company that makes OxyContin, the powerful prescription painkiller that experts say helped touch off an opioid epidemic, plead guilty to three federal criminal charges as part of a settlement of more than $8 billion, in October.
The company will plead guilty to three counts, including conspiracy to defraud the United States and violating federal anti-kickback laws, the officials said. The resolution will be detailed in a bankruptcy court filing in federal court.
Commissioner Miriam Delphin-Rittmon of the Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services said in a press release, "This settlement from McKinsey & Company will be used to combat the long-lasting and destructive ripple effects of this epidemic. Working to alleviate and abate this opioid crisis requires a multifaceted approach focused on prevention, treatment, and recovery services involving community partners across the state working at a local level."
"In addition to providing funds to address the crisis, the agreement calls for McKinsey to prepare tens of thousands of its internal documents detailing its work for Purdue Pharma and other opioid companies for public disclosure online. In addition, McKinsey agreed to adopt a strict document retention plan, continue its investigation into allegations that two of its partners tried to destroy documents in response to investigations of Purdue Pharma, implement a strict ethics code that all partners must agree to each year, and stop advising companies on potentially dangerous Schedule II and III narcotics," said Tong in a press release.
“McKinsey consultants devised a deadly roadmap for Purdue to turbocharge the opioid epidemic, with callous disregard to the human suffering they caused. The hundreds of millions of dollars they will now pay to states will go directly to abating this crisis but will never bring back those we have lost. Connecticut played a central role in these difficult negotiations to extract every possible dollar for opioid abatement, and to ensure that McKinsey’s role in the opioid epidemic is fully exposed and never repeated,” said Attorney General Tong.
The filings described how McKinsey contributed to the opioid crisis by selling marketing schemes and consulting services to opioid manufacturers, including OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma, for over a decade. The complaint, filed with the settlement, details how McKinsey advised Purdue how to maximize profits, including how to target high-volume opioid prescribers, specific messaging to get physicians to prescribe more OxyContin to more patients, and how to circumvent pharmacy restrictions in order to deliver high-dose prescriptions. The complaint also notes that when states sued Purdue’s directors for their implementation of McKinsey’s marketing schemes, McKinsey partners began emailing about deleting documents and emails related to their work for Purdue.
The states’ investigation was led by an executive committee made up of the attorneys general of California, Colorado, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, Tennessee, and Vermont. The executive committee is joined by the attorneys general of Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming, the District of Columbia, and the territories of American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Commissioner Miriam Delphin-Rittmon of the Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services (DMHAS) issued the following statement today on the news of a multistate $573 million settlement with McKinsey & Company, of which Connecticut will receive $7.5 million, for their role in advising opioid companies on how to promote and profit from their drugs.
