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PBS News Hour - Segments

News Wrap: Consulting firm to pay $650 million for helping Purdue Pharma sell opioids

PBS News Hour - Segments

PBS NewsHour

News, Daily News

4.11K Ratings

🗓️ 13 December 2024

⏱️ 6 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In our news wrap Friday, consulting firm McKinsey and Company will pay $650 million to settle a federal investigation into its work for the opioids maker Purdue Pharma, the state of Texas has sued a doctor in New York for mailing abortion pills to a patient in the Dallas area and Russia launched a barrage today of 200 drones and nearly 100 cruise and ballistic missiles all across Ukraine. PBS News is supported by - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/about/funders

Transcript

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0:00.0

In the day's other headlines, the consulting firm McKinsey and company will pay $650 million to settle a federal investigation into its work for the opioids maker Purdue Pharma.

0:12.6

McKinsey consultants worked with Purdue to improve sales, including a 2013 plan to quote, turbocharged sales of the highly addictive painkiller Oxycontin.

0:22.6

In a statement, the company apologized, saying that, quote, our past work for opioid manufacturers

0:28.5

will always be a source of profound regret for our firm.

0:32.8

The U.S. attorney said the settlement should deter other consulting companies from contributing

0:37.2

to such conduct.

0:38.3

This was not hypothetical. This was not just marketing. It was a strategy. It was executed, and it worked.

0:47.3

McKinsey's strategy resulted in prescriptions for Oxycontin that were unsafe, medically unnecessary, and lacked a legitimate purpose,

0:55.6

and were often diverted. In addition to the payment, McKinsey has agreed to implement a compliance

1:01.2

program to identify high-risk clients, and the company won't do any work on the sale,

1:06.9

marketing, or promotion of controlled substances for a period of five years.

1:11.6

The state of Texas is suing a doctor in New York for mailing abortion pills to a patient in the Dallas area.

1:18.6

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton alleges that the doctor violated state law by prescribing abortion-inducing drugs

1:25.6

without being able to practice in Texas.

1:29.4

The lawsuit seeks thousands of dollars in damages, though no criminal charges are involved.

1:34.7

It marks one of the first challenges to so-called shield laws in states like New York, designed

1:40.0

to protect physicians who provide such prescriptions online or over the phone. The number of

1:45.5

abortions in the U.S. has increased slightly since state ban started taking effect after

1:50.6

Rovi-Wade was overturned in 2022. That's in part because of out-of-state telemedicine.

1:57.0

The U.S. military has brought an American who was imprisoned in Syria out of the country.

2:03.1

Two U.S. officials tell the Associated Press that Travis Timmerman has been flown to Jordan on a military helicopter.

2:09.7

He and other prisoners were freed earlier this week after rebel groups ousted the country's president, Bashad al-Assad, and began opening the country's infamous prisons.

...

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