Af­ter months of ne­go­ti­a­tions with states and fed­er­al plain­tiffs ac­cus­ing it of in­sti­gat­ing the opi­oid cri­sis through ag­gres­sive and de­cep­tive mar­ket­ing tac­tics, Pur­due Phar­ma is ready to pay $10 to $12 bil­lion to set­tle it all.

Dan Pol­ster Fed­er­al Bar As­so­ci­a­tion

The po­ten­tial deal would cov­er hun­dreds of law­suits be­ing waged against the com­pa­ny by states, cities, towns and tribes, which is be­ing over­seen by Unit­ed States dis­trict judge Dan Pol­ster in Cleve­land, along­side cas­es in­volv­ing oth­er pre­scrip­tion opi­oid mak­ers. As part of the deal, the Sack­ler fam­i­ly — who had been charged with build­ing a “multi­bil­lion-dol­lar drug em­pire based on ad­dic­tion” — will give up own­er­ship in Pur­due.

The ma­jor­i­ty of the set­tle­ment will come in the form of in-kind drug do­na­tions and prof­its, with the ex­cep­tion of a $3 bil­lion cash pay­ment from the Sack­ler fam­i­ly ($4.5 bil­lion if they man­age to sell Mundiphar­ma, an­oth­er drug com­pa­ny they own, for more). Pur­due has re­port­ed­ly pledged to pro­vide more than $4 bil­lion in drugs, in­clud­ing mar­ket­ed and ex­per­i­men­tal treat­ments for opi­oid ad­dic­tion and over­dose re­ver­sals, to the pub­lic for free. Un­der a new pub­lic ben­e­fit trust struc­ture, all sales of its oth­er drugs — in­clud­ing Oxy­Con­tin, the opi­oid at the cen­ter of its mis­deeds — would al­so go to the plain­tiffs.

If the set­tle­ment is reached, Pur­due will set a re­struc­tur­ing plan in­to mo­tion by first de­clar­ing Chap­ter 11 bank­rupt­cy, then tran­si­tion in­to a trust made of court-ap­point­ed trustees, who will then se­lect a board of di­rec­tors to run the day-to-day op­er­a­tions.

“While Pur­due Phar­ma is pre­pared to de­fend it­self vig­or­ous­ly in the opi­oid lit­i­ga­tion, the com­pa­ny has made clear that it sees lit­tle good com­ing from years of waste­ful lit­i­ga­tion and ap­peals,” the com­pa­ny said in a state­ment to NBC News, which first re­port­ed the deal.

Pur­due Phar­ma — which has re­port­ed­ly made more than $35 bil­lion in Oxy­Con­tin sales — and the Sack­ler fam­i­ly have pre­vi­ous­ly de­nied the le­gal al­le­ga­tions against them.

It’s un­clear whether, or how many, plain­tiffs are on board with the pro­posed terms of the deal. Pur­due is fram­ing it as a take it or leave it deal, since they plan to file for bank­rupt­cy no mat­ter the out­come and the re­sult­ing amount that could go in­to a set­tle­ment would be low­er than cur­rent­ly of­fered, ac­cord­ing to NBC.

An­drew Pol­lis Case West­ern Re­serve

“(The deal is) very sig­nif­i­cant. Nev­er be­fore have we ever seen a mem­ber of a pri­vate in­dus­try of­fer so much mon­ey to try to deal with a pub­lic health cri­sis of this mag­ni­tude,” An­drew Pol­lis, a law pro­fes­sor at Case West­ern Re­serve Uni­ver­si­ty, told NBC.

Opi­oid-re­lat­ed over­dos­es have claimed al­most 400,000 lives from 1999 to 2017, ac­cord­ing to the CDC. Gov­ern­ment at­tor­neys have brought over 2,000 law­suits against opi­oid man­u­fac­tur­ers and dis­trib­u­tors, both seek­ing dam­ages and at­tempt­ing to hold ex­ec­u­tives be­hind the de­ci­sions to boost opi­oid sales at all costs ac­count­able.

In May, ex­ec­u­tives at In­sys — which mar­kets a po­tent fen­tanyl spray — were found guilty of en­gag­ing in a bribery scheme to get doc­tors to pre­scribe their drug, Sub­sys. The com­pa­ny had pre­vi­ous­ly agreed to pay $225 mil­lion to set­tle fed­er­al lit­i­ga­tions, but are still in set­tle­ment talks with states af­ter de­clar­ing bank­rupt­cy. And on Mon­day glob­al phar­ma con­glom­er­ate J&J was found guilty and fined $572 mil­lion in an Ok­la­homa court for its role in the opi­oid epi­dem­ic there.

The par­ties have un­til Fri­day to re­port back to Pol­ster on the deal, the dis­trict judge who had en­cour­aged the set­tle­ment talks, the Wash­ing­ton Post not­ed.

When Venrock partner Bryan Roberts went to check the results from their annual survey of healthcare leaders, what he found was an imprint of the pandemic’s slow arrival in America.

The venture firm had sent their form out to hundreds of insurance and health tech executives, investors, officials and academics on February 24 and gave them two weeks to fill it out. No Americans had died at that point but the coronavirus had become enough of a global crisis that they included two questions about the virus, including “Total U.S. deaths in 2020 from the novel coronavirus will be:”.