Opioid lawsuit moving ahead
♦ Cities and counties are balking at a settlement controlled by states.
As talks continue on a national opioid settlement, a class-action lawsuit is still moving in federal district court.
“The (Multi District Litigation) still exists and they’re gearing up for another bellweather case,” said Andy Davis, a lead attorney on the suit filed by Rome, Floyd County and several other Northwest Georgia governments. Bellweather cases are the ones U.S. District Judge Dan Polster is using to decide questions of law that will apply to the more than 2,000 suits against opioid manufacturers and distributors gathered under the MDL umbrella.
The two Ohio counties slated to be heard first reached a $260 million settlement last week. A group of state attorneys general brokered a deal to expand the settlement to all pending cases, but Davis said it hasn’t been accepted by the MDL negotiation class.
“Right now there’s a hang-up,” Davis said. “There are some AGS that don’t want to let the cities and counties control the money. There’s still that stress that has to be resolved at some point.”
The Rome City and Floyd County commissions declared the opioid crisis a public nuisance that has harmed the community’s residents and led to ongoing costs to taxpayers. They’re seeking damages and funding for local services to address the epidemic.
However, a large share of the proposed national settlement would be a supply of the addiction medication known as Suboxone: an estimated $26 billion worth over 10 years, out of a $48 billion overall settlement.
Addiction experts say states could make a greater impact by spending the money on other measures.
“The primary barrier to getting more people into treatment is not the cost of the drug,” said Andrew Kolodny, senior scientist at the Institute for Behavioral Health at Brandeis University and co-director of the Opioid Policy Research Collaborative.
Kolodny said the real barrier to people with opioid addictions getting help is the lack of willing prescribers and the shortage of treatment programs.
Focusing on just one medication as a one-size-fits-all solution across the country misses the mark, said Yngvild Olsen, an addiction specialist in Baltimore who serves on the board of the American Society of Addiction Medicine.
“Different states may have different needs and obtaining the medication may not be top-most among them,” she said. “Without a robust, trained workforce and funding for comprehensive services, a simplistic settlement may not get us very far.”
More than 48,000 people in the United States died from overdoses of prescription painkillers, heroin and fentanyl in 2017, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Research shows that people who receive addiction medications, including buprenorphine — the primary ingredient in Suboxone — methadone and naltrexone, which is sold as Vivitrol, are at least twice as likely to stay in treatment and recovery as those receiving addiction treatment without medication. The drugs, which block the effects of other opioids, also protect patients from accidental overdose.
But only about 10% of the
more than 2 million Americans — about 200,000 people — with an opioid addiction are receiving treatment, and most treatment does not include these medications, according to data from the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.
Also, in much of the country, few doctors are qualified to write prescriptions for the controlled substance, and even fewer accept Medicaid payments. Cash payment is very common, said Brendan Saloner, a researcher at Johns Hopkins University who studies the availability of opioid treatment.
Kenneth Stoller, who runs a treatment center in Baltimore, said medications represent
only a small portion of the total cost of treatment and recovery services.
And when all the other costs of abating the opioid crisis are accounted for, including child protective services, law enforcement, drug courts, employment training, housing and other medical expenses, the relative share of the costs represented by the medication recedes even more, he said.
In addition to the cash and medication, the companies in the settlement would agree to participate in a data-tracking program to ensure that opioid painkillers are not oversupplied and to change their marketing and distribution policies.