Drug maker thwarted plan to limit OxyContin prescriptions at dawn of opioid epidemic
www.statnews.com/2016/10/26/oxycontin-maker-thwarted-limits/
ELCH, W.Va. — The warning signs of what would become a deadly opioid epidemic emerged in early 2001. That’s when officials of the state employee health plan in West Virginia noticed a surge in deaths attributed to oxycodone, the active ingredient in the painkiller OxyContin.
They quickly decided to do something about it: OxyContin prescriptions would require prior authorization. It was a way to ensure that only people who genuinely needed the painkiller could get it and that people abusing opioids could not.
But an investigation by STAT has found that Purdue Pharma, the manufacturer of OxyContin, thwarted the state’s plan by paying a middleman, known as a pharmacy benefits manager, to prevent insurers from limiting prescriptions of the drug.
The financial quid pro quo between the painkiller maker and the pharmacy benefits manager, Merck Medco, came to light in West Virginia court records unsealed by a state judge at the request of STAT, and in interviews with people familiar with the arrangement.
“We were screaming at the wall,” said Tom Susman, who headed the state’s public employee insurance agency in the early 2000s and led the push to limit OxyContin prescribing in West Virginia.
“We saw it coming,” he said of the opioid epidemic, which today causes 28,000 overdose deaths a year in the United States. “Now to see the aftermath is the most frustrating thing I have ever seen.”
Overprescribing of OxyContin and other opioid painkillers is blamed for helping to plant the seeds for the current opioid crisis. West Virginia has been hit harder than any other state: It suffers the highest per capita drug overdose death rate in the country — more than double the national average. It also has one of the highest rates of painkiller prescribing.
In McDowell County, where the court records from a state lawsuit against Purdue were unsealed, the local sheriff said prescription pill abuse is so rampant that the county plans to file a new lawsuit against painkiller makers.
The strategy to pay Merck Medco extended to other big pharmacy benefit managers and to many other states, according to a former Purdue official responsible for ensuring favorable treatment for OxyContin. The payments were in the form of “rebates” paid by Purdue to the companies. In return, the pharmacy benefit managers agreed to make the drug available without prior authorization and with low copayments.
Filed under: General Problems
West Virginia,like sooo many others data is all corrupted,,its all propaganda,,,not once has any actual responsible chronic pain person been asked to speak to congress,or ay other government agency,,The whole claim is ludicrous,,a lie,,,a tool for propaganda,,Ive been thru West Virgina,,big coal country,,,how many miners have now be forced off their medicine and have been forced to choose death to stop their physical pain from medical illness,,,but their deaths were counted as a o.d.???????Don’t know,,,the government refuse to even acknowledge that forced decision of death to stop physical pain is a part of this whole prohibition on our medicine,,,thus more propaganda,,,mary