McKinsey advised Purdue to offer discounts for opioid overdoses



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Consulting firm McKinsey & Company advised Purdue Pharma, producer of the addictive pain reliever OxyContin, to give drug distributors a discount for each overdose of OxyContin attributable to the pills they sold, according to bankruptcy filings obtained and reviewed by The New York Times.

Why is this important: It was one of the many options McKinsey offered to the Sackler family, the owners of Purdue, to boost sales of the drug, at a time when opioid abuse had already killed thousands in the United States. United.

Details: A presentation from McKinsey in 2017 projected how many distributor customers, including CVS and Anthem, might overdose or develop a usability disorder.

  • The consulting firm predicted that in 2019, 2,484 CVS clients would overdose or develop an opioid addiction, and that Purdue would pay CVS a rebate of $ 36.8 million that year.
  • The discounts and other strategies were McKinsey’s attempts to help Purdue find a way to “counter the emotional messages from mothers of teenage overdoses” on OxyContin.

CVS and hymn told NYT they had never received such discounts.

  • In 2018, McKinsey began to worry about the legal backlash of taking Purdue as a client, and members of the firm’s leadership asked if the company should prepare for lawsuits by “clearing all our documents. and emails ”.
  • “It is not known whether the company’s consultants destroyed any documents,” according to NYT.

The big picture: Purdue pleaded guilty on Tuesday to three counts, including preventing efforts by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration to tackle the drug crisis and paying illegal bribes to doctors.

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