Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
The Next Big Question In Opioid Court Cases: Will The Spoils Be Divided Up Fairly?
The Washington Post: In Oklahoma, Opioid Case Windfall Starts Winners Squabbling
When Oklahoma settled a landmark lawsuit against drugmaker Purdue Pharma in March, the state and some of its cities looked on with irritation as nearly $200 million went to a new addiction treatment and research center at Oklahoma State University. The state, which Attorney General Mike Hunter was elected to represent, got nothing in the $270 million deal. Oklahoma’s more than 670 cities and counties, which have absorbed most of the emergency and health-care costs of the opioid epidemic, received just $12.5 million to divvy up. Neither had any say in the agreement, which gave about $60 million to private attorneys hired to work on the case. (Bernstein, 6/20)
CNN: OxyContin Manufacturer Purdue Pharma Maintains Its Innocence In Opioid Epidemic
David Sackler, whose family owns Purdue Pharma, is defending the company and his family against what he describes as "vitriolic hyperbole," saying they're not to blame for the opioid crisis ravaging the nation. In an extensive interview with Vanity Fair published Wednesday, Sackler insisted his family had nothing to do with the crisis even though their company unveiled and heavily marketed the drug OxyContin as a new, safe and effective opioid in the 1990s. (Karimi, 6/20)
Stat: FDA, Accused Of Being Too Lax In Approval Of Opioids, Outlines New Criteria
The Food and Drug Administration on Thursday outlined the agency’s plans for weighing submissions for new opioid approvals, following criticism that the agency has been too lax in giving the green light to powerful new painkillers and calls for it to halt the approval of new opioids. In a draft guidance, the agency said that it planned to start comparing the safety and effectiveness of opioid medications up for approval against those of painkillers — both opioids and other types — already on the market. (Joseph, 6/20)
The Associated Press: US Appeals Court Says Judge Went Too Far On Drug Data Order
A federal appeals court ruled Thursday that a judge went too far in blocking release of federal data about how prescription opioids were distributed. A 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals three-judge panel on Thursday vacated an order by Cleveland-based U.S. District Judge Dan Polster to keep the Drug Enforcement Administration database and other case information sealed from the public. The panel wrote that Polster should follow proper legal standards in deciding what information could be withheld and why it would be harmful to release it. (6/20)
The Wall Street Journal: WHO Removes Opioid Guidelines After Report Claims Drug-Industry Influence
The World Health Organization has withdrawn two prescription guidelines for opioid painkillers after U.S. lawmakers alleged the guidance was influenced by the pharmaceutical industry. The WHO, which provides public-health policy guidance for world-wide use, said Wednesday it was discontinuing the guidelines “in light of new scientific evidence.” The move will also “address any issues of conflicts of interest of the experts that have been raised,” the organization said in a statement. (Calfas, 6/20)
North Carolina Health News: Opioid Bills At Odds With Each Other, Advocates Say
At the state General Assembly, there are two forces trying to stop opioid overdose deaths. But they seem at odds with each other. Prosecutors are concerned with stopping drug dealers and their ability to supply the drug market. Meanwhile, public health advocates are lobbying lawmakers in what they claim is the best interest of drug users’ health and safety. There are three pieces of opioid legislation moving through legislative committees right now. The first two encourage people who use opioids to call for help during an overdose and to protect themselves against infectious diseases and overdoses. (Knopf, 6/21)
Meanwhile, KHN has launched a new interactive tool in which to search individual prescribing habits by doctor name or associated hospitals —
Kaiser Health News: Surgeons’ Opioid-Prescribing Habits Hard To Kick
As opioid addiction and deadly overdoses escalated into an epidemic across the U.S., thousands of surgeons continued to hand out far more pills than needed for postoperative pain relief, according to a KHN-Johns Hopkins analysis of Medicare data. Many doctors wrote prescriptions for dozens of opioid tablets after surgeries — even for operations that cause most patients relatively little pain, according to the analysis, done in collaboration with researchers at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. It examined almost 350,000 prescriptions written for patients operated on by nearly 20,000 surgeons from 2011 to 2016 — the latest year for which data are available. (Appleby and Lucas, 6/21)
Kaiser Health News: Opioid Operators: How Surgeons Ply Patients With Painkillers
Even as awareness of the opioid crisis grew, prescribing habits of surgeons changed very little from 2011 to 2016, found a data analysis by Kaiser Health News and Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. Our team looked at surgeons whose Medicare patients filled a prescription for opioids within a week of having one of seven common surgical procedures. (Lucas, 6/20)
