BridgeMI posted seven stories yesterday on the aftermath of the $ 800 million opioid settlement in Michigan and the festival of greed which has ensued. It is the same sudden windfall/big spending process by which big lottery winners go bankrupt:
Michigan opioid cash sparks feeding frenzy of vendors, seeking cut of $1.5B
By Ron French & Robin Erb - February 7, 2024* Cities and counties in Michigan are in line to receive more about $725 million in opioid settlement funds
* Local officials say they are flooded with product offers nearly every day and have trouble weighing their worth
* Advocates urge Michigan local officials invest in existing community services rather than new gadgetsKatelyn Zeits has become very popular in the past 12 months. The Benzie County administrator has been flooded with emails and phone calls from across the country pitching products for her small county on the shores of Lake Michigan, from out-of-town counseling services to $200,000 body scanners similar to those used in airports.
“They say, ‘Oh, we can use your money like this, this is our equipment, it’s an allowable expenditure (under opioid settlement guidelines),’” Zeits said. “There are so many people out there trying to get a grab of that money.”
Michigan counties, townships and cities are in line to receive about $725 million over 18 years as part of a national settlement of numerous lawsuits against manufacturers, distributors and pharmacies accused of downplaying the risks and ignoring the perils of prescription painkillers, fueling a nationwide opioid crisis.
Combined with money coming into the state, Michigan is in line to receive $1.5 billion total. The state and local governments have already received $181 million, most of it within the past 13 months. From that pot, the tally for local governments is almost $68 million.
From overdose-tracking software to drug test strips, “there’s not a day that really goes by where there isn't some sort of sales email coming to (me),” said Jackson County Health Officer Kristin Pluta.
Advocates hope the money will help curb a crisis that has killed more than 11,000 Michiganders since 2018.
Advocates say the best way to save lives is to expand local services and fill gaps in treatment and recovery. But to do that, local officials more accustomed to road repairs and zoning approvals must navigate through a feeding frenzy of vendors hawking merchandise marketed to capture settlement dollars, said Jonathan Stoltman, director of the Opioid Policy Institute in West Michigan.
“There are so many sharks in the water now because there’s so much money,” Stoltman said.
“I’ve heard (opioid settlement fund pitches for) radar guns to catch speeders, because speeders could be drug dealers,” said Sara Whaley, program director of the Bloomberg Overdose Prevention Initiative at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. “Any time there are dollar signs, there are for-profit organizations looking for their piece of the pie.”
One example: County officials have been pitched on the purchase of Naloxbox, a plastic container for Narcan. The cheapest model retails for $260, no supplies included. The product is promoted as a “new and innovative way” to expand Narcan access, but Stoltman said it’s an overpriced gadget — “like a Tupperware box that’s bolted onto the wall.”
Benzie County’s Zeits told Bridge a company pushed her to buy a $200,000 body scanner for the county’s 40-person capacity jail.
“They said it’s used in Miami-Dade (Corrections Center),” Zeits said, laughing. “I told them, ‘Have you ever been to Benzie County?’”
Two counties — Kalamazoo and St. Clair — did use opioid settlement funds to buy body scanners for their jails. Kalamazoo County Commissioners Chair John Taylor told Bridge the body scanner is an added safety measure for county inmates who could overdose if they sneak in drugs. A call to St. Clair County Controller Karry Hepting for comment was not returned.
Narcan vending machines are available to Michigan communities at no cost through a program at Wayne State University funded by the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services.
So far, the school has placed 35 machines in 20 counties, according to Danielle Lenz, project coordinator at the Center for Behavioral Health and Justice at Wayne State. Still, there are “multiple vendors who sell these types of machines,” Lenz said, at prices up to $7,400.
Lori Ziolkowski, chapter president of Families Against Narcotics in Bay County, urged local governments to look for simple, inexpensive ways to save lives. Repurposed old newspaper boxes can be set up in public spaces and stocked with Narcan.
One such Narcan newspaper box in downtown Bay City distributes about 100 boxes of the life-saving drug a month, Ziolkowski said.
Recent conferences for county officials hosted by the Michigan Association of Counties included vendors from Deterra, which sells a system to deactivate prescription leftover opioid prescriptions.
Michigan’s health department offers technical assistance for local jurisdictions, and has participated in a series of in-person and online listening sessions to assess local needs, and the Michigan Association of Counties provides an online resource library for local government officials working to figure out how best to spend settlement funds.
“Everyone wants that magic solution. But these dollars are not the opportunity to invest in a pilot program,” said Johns Hopkins’ Whaley. “Getting communities talking to agencies already working on the ground (does more good) than a fancy vending machine.”
The other six BridgeMI stories on the aftermath of the $ 800 million opioid settlement in Michigan are worth your time as well.
And in the way of sudden windfalls, sometimes they disappear.
Medpage Today reports on the SCOTUS decision striking down the Purdue Pharma/Sackler Opioid Settlement.
On the same day Michigan's 2025 budget is announced. Wonder how much of the settlement has already been spent?
https://www.medpagetoday.com/publichealthpolicy/opioids/110851
Supreme Court Rejects Purdue Pharma Settlement That Shielded Sacklers
— In a 5-4 decision, justices blocked an agreement with victims and state and local governments
The Supreme Court on Thursday rejected a nationwide settlement with oxycodone hydrochloride (OxyContin) maker Purdue Pharma that would have shielded members of the Sackler family who own the company from civil lawsuits over the toll of opioids but also would have provided billions of dollars to combat the opioid epidemic.
After deliberating over the case (Harrington v. Purdue Pharma) for more than 6 months, the justices in a 5-4 vote blocked an agreement hammered out with state and local governments and victims. The Sacklers would have contributed up to $6 billion and given up ownership of the company, but would have retained billions more. The agreement provided that the company would emerge from bankruptcy as a different entity, with its profits used for treatment and prevention.
Justice Neil Gorsuch, writing for the majority, said "nothing in present law authorizes the Sackler discharge."
Justices Brett Kavanaugh, Ketanji Brown Jackson, Elena Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayor dissented.
"Opioid victims and other future victims of mass torts will suffer greatly in the wake of today's unfortunate and destabilizing decision," Kavanaugh wrote.
The high court had put the settlement on hold last summer, in response to objections from the Biden administration.
It's unclear what happens next.
"Today's Supreme Court ruling marks a major setback for the families who lost loved ones to overdose and for those still struggling with addiction," Edward Neiger, a lawyer representing more than 60,000 overdose victims, said in a statement.
"The Purdue plan was a victim-centered plan that would provide billions of dollars to the states to be used exclusively to abate the opioid crisis and $750 million for victims of the crisis, so that they could begin to rebuild their lives. As a result of the senseless 3-year crusade by the government against the plan, thousands of people died of overdose, and today's decision will lead to more needless overdose deaths."
An opponent of the settlement praised the outcome.
Ed Bisch's 18-year-old son Eddie, died from an overdose after taking OxyContin in Philadelphia in 2001.
The older Bisch, who lives in New Jersey, has been speaking out against Purdue and Sackler family members ever since and is part of a relatively small but vocal group of victims and family members who opposed the settlement.
"This is a step toward justice. It was outrageous what they were trying to get away with," he said Thursday. "They have made a mockery of the justice system, and then they tried to make a mockery of the bankruptcy system."
He said he would have accepted the deal if he thought it would have made a dent in the opioid crisis.
He's now calling on the Department of Justice to seek criminal charges against Sackler family members.
Arguments in early December lasted nearly 2 hours in a packed courtroom as the justices seemed, by turns, unwilling to disrupt a carefully negotiated settlement and reluctant to reward the Sacklers.
The issue for the justices was whether the legal shield that bankruptcy provides can be extended to people such as the Sacklers, who have not declared bankruptcy themselves. Lower courts had issued conflicting decisions over that issue, which also has implications for other major product liability lawsuits settled through the bankruptcy system.
The U.S. Bankruptcy Trustee, an arm of the Justice Department, argued that the bankruptcy law does not permit protecting the Sackler family from being sued. During the Trump administration, the government supported the settlement.
The Biden administration had argued to the court that negotiations could resume, and perhaps lead to a better deal, if the court were to stop the current agreement.
Proponents of the plan said third-party releases are sometimes necessary to forge an agreement, and federal law imposes no prohibition against them.
OxyContin first hit the market in 1996, and Purdue Pharma's aggressive marketing of it is often cited as a catalyst of the nationwide opioid epidemic, with doctors persuaded to prescribe painkillers with less regard for addiction dangers.
The drug and the Stamford, Connecticut-based company became synonymous with the crisis, even though the majority of pills being prescribed and used were generic drugs. Opioid-related overdose deaths have continued to climb, hitting 80,000 in recent years. Most of those are from fentanyl and other synthetic drugs.
The Purdue Pharma settlement would have ranked among the largest reached by drug companies, wholesalers, and pharmacies to resolve epidemic-related lawsuits filed by state, local, and Native American tribal governments and others. Those settlements have totaled more than $50 billion.
But the Purdue Pharma settlement would have been only the second so far to include direct payments to victims from a $750 million pool. Payouts would have ranged from about $3,500 to $48,000.
Sackler family members are no longer on the company's board, and they have not received payouts from it since before Purdue Pharma entered bankruptcy. In the decade before that, though, they were paid more than $10 billion, about half of which family members said went to pay taxes.
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