Purdue Pharma going bankrupt

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Rianne

Rianne

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Looks like they want to settle for $10-$12B, then file chapter 11. Purdue then restructures to form a public benefit trust for 10 years.


https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-new...s-10-12-billion-settle-opioid-claims-n1046526


That sounds like a lot, but news sources estimate the damage from opioids exceeds $50-60B including all the support, police, family expense, re hab, medical etc. This all comes after the Johnson and Johnson ruling of @$572M to victims in Oklahoma. Wow! That all happened quickly.
 
"their company’s sales practices were deceptive and at least partly responsible for the opioid crisis, which claimed more than 400,000 lives from 1999 to 2017"

I wonder if bankruptcy is a severe enough penalty.
 
I do not want any agreement to absolve corporate officials from personal and criminal liability.
 
tfudtuckerpucker said:
"their company’s sales practices were deceptive and at least partly responsible for the opioid crisis, which claimed more than 400,000 lives from 1999 to 2017"

I wonder if bankruptcy is a severe enough penalty.
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+1000

I'm an example of a different kind of victim, like many others on this board. Sometimes I have severe pain and now I can't get the appropriate pain meds. You know I have to take this garbage a couple months every 5 years or so. So I have an issue? My last need for meds got me half the meds I had 5 years ago. Someone forgot to tell my body it has half the pain!

Our doctors are afraid to prescribe appropriate medications! How nice.
 
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MRG said:
+1000

I'm an example of a different kind of victim, like many others on this board. Sometimes I have severe pain and now I can't get the appropriate pain meds. You know I have to take this garbage a couple months every 5 years or so. So I have an issue? My last need for meds got me half the meds I had 5 years ago. Someone forgot to tell my body it has half the pain!

Our doctors are afraid to prescribe appropriate medications! How nice.
Click to expand...

And when the doctors do prescribe the appropriate medications and usage, some pharmacies will not fill the prescription because it does not meet "their" internal practices/guidelines. They hold off filling the prescription while they go back to the doctor to have the prescription rewritten. That may take another day or worse if the two's office hours do not coincide. Just who are they to 2nd guess the doctor? :mad:
 
StandardOperatingProcedure is filing bankruptcy.

Blame the retailer's w/deep pockets :popcorn:
Afaik.....

Good luck!
 
CRLLS said:
And when the doctors do prescribe the appropriate medications and usage, some pharmacies will not fill the prescription because it does not meet "their" internal practices/guidelines. They hold off filling the prescription while they go back to the doctor to have the prescription rewritten. That may take another day or worse if the two's office hours do not coincide. Just who are they to 2nd guess the doctor? :mad:
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Pharmacists are highly trained professionals who also have a responsibility to patients. Their vigilance catches many errors and prevents inappropriate treatment courses. They are a vital part of the 'team'. MDs should clearly share some of the blame for the opioid crisis and better guidelines and checks and balances likely would have helped reduce or prevent the crisis.
 
CRLLS said:
And when the doctors do prescribe the appropriate medications and usage, some pharmacies will not fill the prescription because it does not meet "their" internal practices/guidelines. They hold off filling the prescription while they go back to the doctor to have the prescription rewritten. That may take another day or worse if the two's office hours do not coincide. Just who are they to 2nd guess the doctor? :mad:
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Thank you for sharing that. Some of what I've been told is true! Sad a doctor's prescription is subject to review by well meaning but otherwise "ignorant" folks. I know in my subject matter I could object to many others' implementions out of my ignorance of their knowledge. When I understood the problem most objections went away.

As an example of your point: Today I was told a $200 prescription was now $2,000 a month. The pharmacist had an issue with their double checking. They somehow wanted to give me 10× the amount of meds prescribed!
 
MRG said:
+1000

I'm an example of a different kind of victim, like many others on this board. Sometimes I have severe pain and now I can't get the appropriate pain meds. You know I have to take this garbage a couple months every 5 years or so. So I have an issue? My last need for meds got me half the meds I had 5 years ago. Someone forgot to tell my body it has half the pain!

Our doctors are afraid to prescribe appropriate medications! How nice.
Click to expand...

The medication is not the problem. People taking the medication in a way it's not intended is the problem. Some people abusing the drugs now make it very difficult for people who actually need it and take it appropriately. Why punish the good people because of the bad people?
 
I missed this thread and posted this as a subject. Sorry.

Most of the questions still stand, even after reading the NBC article.
...........................................................................................................

I need a little help in understanding the headlines about the legal potential settlements for the opioid problem. The headlines and article are filled with bits and pieces, but few detail the situation with full explanations and numbers that are involved.

So.. in one place, how about the answers to some simple questions.

How many people have died from overdoses? 400,000
Over what period of time? 1999 2017
How much has this cost? One year? Over the long term? $504 Billion (article)
Who sued whom? Individual, group, or what class of persons?
Suit for the benefit of:
A single person?
Named persons?
Survivors?
The state?
Unpaid medical bills?
Hospital, Doctors?
Future deaths?
Treatment costs (aside from deaths)

As a Class action, if that is the case.... who decides what is involved?
What class?
Who is involved?
For current or past losses?
For future expenses?

The offer to settle for Billions?
Where will the money go?
Will victims be notified?

Will each case require a separate lawsuit?
Who decides? The Judge?
How is a victim's life valued? Separately? All the same?

What would a class action settlement do for the guilty drug company? What kind of liability.

Many more questions, but so far I haven't found a source that explains what the legal process entails.

Would appreciate a link to a full explanation, or answers to some of the questions above.
.................................................. .......................................

Maybe to simplify... imagine your husband, wife, child, relative or friend has died from an overdose. What would a settlement mean?

I assume I'm the only one who doesn't understand what is going on. Our local newspaper had a two page article on this but not a single answer to any of the questions listed above. Am feeling very dumb at this point.
__________________
 
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6miths said:
Pharmacists are highly trained professionals who also have a responsibility to patients. Their vigilance catches many errors and prevents inappropriate treatment courses. They are a vital part of the 'team'. MDs should clearly share some of the blame for the opioid crisis and better guidelines and checks and balances likely would have helped reduce or prevent the crisis.
Click to expand...
In my case that I was referring to, the pharmacist had told me it was law. It wasn't. It was the pharmacy's corp policy mis-applying the federal guidelines. In fact, the feds had published a follow-up memo a week before my prescription date stating their guidelines were being applied with a wide brush and their quidelines were intended only for a very focused set of patients. I did my research and found the Fed's memo and the company policy. When I went to pick up the prescription I gave her a copy of the fed's memo along with their company policy and kindly educated her that the delay was unnecessary and took more of her time.
 
aaronc879 said:
The medication is not the problem. People taking the medication in a way it's not intended is the problem. Some people abusing the drugs now make it very difficult for people who actually need it and take it appropriately. Why punish the good people because of the bad people?
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+1
 
"Pain Centers" have always been in play. Doctors making dough with their Rx pads have always been in play.

Me thinks the magnitude of the problem comes from the supply side.
 
My wife is the poster child for pain management. She's been in the care of pain management clinics for the past 18 years. She has terrible arthritis and has had two major shoulder operations, an elbow surgery, carpel tunnel surgery and a laminectomy for spinal stenosis. In the past year, she's also had a knee replacement, and she still needs two mid foot fusions that will take her off her feet for the better part of a year.

There are many people like her in this world that require controlled substances, often opioids, to keep out of the hospital and nursing homes. Without medicines, my wife would simply be an invalid. With medicine, she's an active member of society living a great life. She goes to a proper pain management clinic staffed by an anesthesiologist with a fellowship in pain management and 5 P/A's and Nurse Practitioners.

But the politics of opioids is really affecting patients' healthcare everywhere. Her pain management doctor 2 months received a letter from the state telling him to specifically cut back my wife's medicines by a third. And she has been taken off generic morphine sulfate and put on a new generation morphine that costs $1250 per month (up from $200 per month.) Our deductible is $265. The trouble is that no pharmacies stock this medicine and I had to go to 17 pharmacies last month to find it in stock--70 miles away from home. She's doing okay on the lesser dose of medicine, however she requires Norco's in between the morphine meds and she's waking up in the middle of the night crying because her feet are hurting so bad.

My wife's pain management doctor walked out (quit) 8/1, and went back to passing gas at the local hospital operating rooms. It broke his heart to not be able to service the really 2000 patients he's keeping out of the hospital.

The states should be going after the doctors writing all the mega prescriptions and their pharmacies filling mega prescriptions. State computers keep track of every controlled prescription, and they know who that "candy men" are. It takes years to get these doctors out of the "pill mill" business.

So many of the opioid deaths are younger people that are drug addicts with no need for the meds. And many of these deaths now are from the synthetic heroins that are laced with Chinese Fentanyl.

We have seen many well run pain management clinics simply go out of business. And with the trend toward new generation opioid medicines that cost 6 times the old meds, very few of the patients can afford the meds since they're too physically decimated to work. The sick and unemployed are going to turn to the criminal world for heroin and other serious drugs to relieve their pain. And many of these chronically ill people are simply going to die from overdoses--or suicide after they cannot live with the hurts.

With the large number of Baby Boomers coming of age, they're the next group that's going to require pain medicine in mass. Let me just say that the states' civil service employees with zero experience in medicine have no business dictating to doctors what their patients require. They know nothing about pain and what it does to families. The state needs to go after the drug dealers and the doctors that have sold their souls to the Devil prescribing millions of pills.
 
CRLLS said:
And when the doctors do prescribe the appropriate medications and usage, some pharmacies will not fill the prescription because it does not meet "their" internal practices/guidelines. They hold off filling the prescription while they go back to the doctor to have the prescription rewritten. That may take another day or worse if the two's office hours do not coincide. Just who are they to 2nd guess the doctor? :mad:
Click to expand...

^
This also come into play when the pharmacy (corporate) is afraid to go up against the DEA. Or has to follow guidelines from the DEA who will have a different interpretation of the law on their books depending on which person you talk to on which day.
When our corporate office reads in the newspaper that Walgreens was fined $80 million by the DEA they stand up and take notice. Then start putting limits, extra steps, getting diagnosis codes, length of treatment, other procedures the MD has tried for the patient beside narcotics....the list goes on.
Over the past 20 years I have seen the pendulum swing from 'if you have a valid prescription you fill it' to 'If a prescription is for a large qty of narcotic you question everything about it and even refuse to fill it if it doesn't meet our guidelines.'

It all boils down to CYA because if you get large quantities of narcotics and accidentally overdose the first name(s) the surviving family members go after (to sue) is the prescriber and the retail pharmacy with the question, "why would you ever fill/write for such a large amount of opioids?"
 
Add my wife to the list of people screwed by the crackdown on opioids.

Same story as others above. Pain was well managed for over 5 years, after a lot of trial-and-error, on a low dose of opioids. Dose never went up, she never became addicted, never used any drugs illegally or even off-label.

They started adding all kinds of extra hoops to jump through. By the end, to stay on the medication, she'd have to visit the doctor monthly, and also sign up for a drug testing program. All out of pocket.

Just to prove how stupid the whole system was, instead winding down the dose over time as recommended, she quit cold turkey. No withdrawal symptoms, no knocking over a liquor store to buy more.

Leave it to the politicians. It's so easy to pass knee-jerk, one-size-fits-all legislation, rather than work to actually address the real problems.
 
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CaptTom said:
.

Leave it to the politicians
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In this case, I'd add "leave it to the lawyers and courts." As usual, they went after the folks with the deep pockets, the manufacturers, who have little to do with who can actually obtain the drugs. They should have gone after the docs who wrote the prescriptions and the government agencies who wrote the rules and regulations. But those aren't the easiest source of the most money.

By punishing the manufacturers, we're punishing the folks whose response has to be with the broadest brush and will result in the most folks legitimately using the drug to have more expensive/complicated/difficult access to them.

I suppose Johnson and Johnson should now stop manufacturing opioids to ensure unauthorized or inappropriate access is no longer possible.
 
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My BIL, a dentist in FL., visited the other week.What a mess they've created, three days max on opioids. He said for dental stuff it was okay but made 2x more work. He said the hospices were in terrible condition because of these changes.
 
MRG said:
My BIL, a dentist in FL., visited the other week.What a mess they've created, three days max on opioids. He said for dental stuff it was okay but made 2x more work. He said the hospices were in terrible condition because of these changes.
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The three day max or five day max is going to be a real problem. The people who actually need the medication can't go to the pharmacy every few days to get more meds. When I had my THR my Mom was able to go and get my meds for me but when I need a revision surgery in the future I will have no one to help me and the pain will be even worse and for a longer period of time. I think there will be a significant increase in suicides by people who actually need the pain meds and can't get them. Punishing the good people because of what a few bad people do is not right.
 
I'm a chronic pain sufferer due to back issues. It's not horrible all of the time, but when it is, it is, and has, on 3 different occasions, lasted for months before abating.
I have no problem getting all of the NSAIDs I want (at the expense of the possible demise of my kidneys), and can get opioids in limited quantity, which I avoid because it really isn't all that effective, makes me horribly constipated, and I don't want to get addicted.

Recently NY State (my state) has legalized Medical Marijuana for "chronic pain" sufferers. It sounds like this might be a logical, relatively safe option, however, finding a practitioner has proven difficult-to-impossible. I was referred to a "pain management" MD, and all they are interested in is injection procedures. If you don't want invasive interventions, I get the impression you fall into the category of "no way to make money of this guy"...and the office I was referred to didn't even have the medical marijuana registered certificate.
How, in this age of enlightenment, a "pain management" clinic can completely deny themselves and their patients the possible advantages of medical marijuana in a state where it is legal, is beyond me.
But if I called today, they'd get me in and give me an Rx for an opioid.
 
Legitimate use of opioids, Drs. treating their patients for chronic pain management conflicts with Drs. writing scripts to appease patients with no real need. There are so many diseases, joint, spinal situations that require someone to live a normal active life. And those with end stage disease who need relief.

How does a Dr differentiate between the reality of pain and addiction? Anyone been to the ER? Or have a loved one or friend who lives in pain, daily? My DB has spinal stenosis (born with it). It pains me to watch him walk, get up from a chair, lift anything. He swims for some relief but other than major surgery, which does not guarantee relief, what does he do? Yes, opioids are over prescribed. Sometimes prescribed without good reason for a simple easy solution to a complaining patient. There are necessary legitimate uses of opioids. This problem is beyond my comprehension.
 
Florida has legalized marijuana and made it pretty easy to get a license . It is expensive . The first visit is several hundred dollars and then you have to keep going back for renewal . Most of my friends are just using CBD oil on their arthritic joints . They claim to get relief from that .I feel sorry for anyone with chronic pain .My SO has been having arthritis problems recently and the wait to see a rheumatologist is ten months .
 
I get relief from CBD ointment with THC but I don’t have severe arthritis. Before marijuana was legal here it was fairly easy to get it for medical conditions. I have been prescribed pain medications for after surgery and only need to use them for a few days. I never throw the leftovers away because occasionally I have horrible back pain and can use them for a few days to get myself over the hump. I also find relief from the chiropractor. I think we need to prosecute the pill mill doctors and let people that have chronic pain use what they need.
 
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