Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

McKinsey Proposed Paying Pharmacy Companies Rebates for OxyContin Overdoses

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 110 posts

Re: McKinsey Proposed Paying Pharmacy Companies Rebates for OxyContin Overdoses

#61

Post by zug_zug »

ashtonkem wrote: post #51
zug_zug wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's pretty easy to act outraged and say "somebody should be punished," and most people I know, and most politicians, do. As for actually doing research, thinking about it, and bothering up to come up with a proposal... I guess nobody actually cares THAT much.

> As for actually doing research, thinking about it, and bothering up to come up with a proposal... I guess nobody actually cares THAT much. Spare us the snark, it's not helpful. You should know that one cannot just draw up a proposal to bring criminal charges; only a very small number of people have the legal authority and resources to do that.

Well I mean that pretty sincerely. I think people find it fun to be outraged. I don't think people genuinely care enough to learn who the involved parties are, and make a sincere proposal on what went wrong.

Re: McKinsey Proposed Paying Pharmacy Companies Rebates for OxyContin Overdoses

#62

Post by smabie »

guptaneil wrote: post #29

> On Tuesday, Purdue pleaded guilty to criminal charges, including defrauding federal health agencies and paying illegal kickbacks to doctors. The company also faces roughly $8.3 billion in penalties. As part of the settlement, members of the Sackler family will pay $225 million in civil penalties. They made over $12 billion in profit as of last year[0], so they still came out ahead... 0: https://www.forbes.com/sites…

You're saying they made 12bn dollars that they would not have if they didn't do all of this stuff? I kind of doubt it. I'm not expert on Purdue Parma, but I'm guessing this whole escapade will be EV negative for them.

Re: McKinsey Proposed Paying Pharmacy Companies Rebates for OxyContin Overdoses

#63

Post by smabie »

boringg wrote: post #36
ashtonkem wrote: post #18

I feel like this isn’t the first time McKinsey has been caught encouraging or enabling some pretty horrific stuff. It’s probably time they get some prosecutorial attention.

Seriously, they have taken a real nose dive. I wonder if they still have MBAs competing for their jobs or if this has taken out the top level talent (and shipped it over to SV)

Top level talent never joined consulting in the first place. Wall St is considered by most a more desirable and prestigious career path. It's also usually more lucrative.

Traders and investment bankers especially consider consultants to be major losers (including me).

Re: McKinsey Proposed Paying Pharmacy Companies Rebates for OxyContin Overdoses

#64

Post by cool_dude85 »

troughway wrote: post #60
newbie789 wrote: post #55

I've at this point had (at least) eight friends die from opioid overdoses in the past ~10 years. I myself was nearly one of them a long time ago. It's really disappointing to see this bullshit.

Forgive me for sounding daft. I feel reluctant taking one Tylenol pill nevermind anything close to this - how exactly have you had at least eight friends die? Was it accidental? Uncontrolled dosage? Suicide? Do you forget that you had taken it already? I keep hearing about the opioid deaths and the crisis but what exactly happens that these people overdose on it?

They're addicted to opioids and are, while under the influence of opioids, not making sound health decisions.

Re: McKinsey Proposed Paying Pharmacy Companies Rebates for OxyContin Overdoses

#65

Post by s5300 »

troughway wrote: post #60
newbie789 wrote: post #55

I've at this point had (at least) eight friends die from opioid overdoses in the past ~10 years. I myself was nearly one of them a long time ago. It's really disappointing to see this bullshit.

Forgive me for sounding daft. I feel reluctant taking one Tylenol pill nevermind anything close to this - how exactly have you had at least eight friends die? Was it accidental? Uncontrolled dosage? Suicide? Do you forget that you had taken it already? I keep hearing about the opioid deaths and the crisis but what exactly happens that these people overdose on it?

Heroin (an opioid) is known to bring quite literally the happiest euphoria known to man. You can read this sentiment of it just about everywhere. For simplicity - take it as exactly that: a drug that induces the feeling of the happiest warmth imaginable

Then, realize, some people come from absolutely fucked and broken lives. Being beaten and raped by their own family members they have to live with (sometimes for years) - if you're not aware that things like this go on - I'm mostly happy for you. But yeah, this is very much a thing.

Then put together what it has to be like being a person coming from an absolutely broken place and having never had the slightest emotional warmth and happiness in your entire life, and finding something relatively cheap and easily sourced that takes away all of that pain for some amount of time.

Then, realize, that tolerance to this euphoria inducing drug grows rather quickly, what you find on the street gets laced with shit like fentanyl, etc - and it's not hard to see why countless deaths occur.

Also, somewhat unrelated, but you sound like you've never had much of a bout with extreme lasting physical pain. Shit can get unfathomably intense.

For better answers perhaps, look to the bluelight forums.

Re: McKinsey Proposed Paying Pharmacy Companies Rebates for OxyContin Overdoses

#66

Post by nobody9999 »

AmericanChopper wrote: post #15
curiousllama wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only if you define resource so broadly as to constitute anything, at which point the statement becomes “all relationships are based on things” ... which, like, yes of course

Whether resources are material or not isn’t relevant. The attention, care, kindness, compassion that a person has to offer others is a resource (and a finite one at that). The basis of the claim is that these entities are viewing other people as nothing more than what those people have to offer them. If you prescribe to the doctrine of psychological egoism, then that is how every single person views every single rela…

>But if you view this scenario from that perspective, there’s no logical reason that you shouldn’t also view the relationships you have with your own spouse/parents/children/friends... the same way.

Absolutely. And while such attitudes are not incredibly widespread, there are enough folks who do so that we have a name for exhibiting such behavior. We call it Narcissistic Personality Disorder[0].

Which is a terrible thing to do of course, as it stigmatizes a whole group of people that just want to live their lives and use the the objects in their environment to their advantage. What's bad with that?

[0] https://www.helpguide.org/articles/mental-disorders/narcissi...

Re: McKinsey Proposed Paying Pharmacy Companies Rebates for OxyContin Overdoses

#67

Post by com2kid »

jagrsw wrote: post #35

~10 years ago I was visiting the Bay Area (I live in EU), and developed knee pain (rather strong). I went to the emergency room in a city hospital, and long story short, I was given a prescription for paracetamol or ibuprofen and something called Norco, which is apparently some kind of opioid. In the pharmacy (CVS i think), the pharmacist was calling somewhere to confirm the prescription and my identity and was tryin…

ERs are expensive.

An urgent care clinic would have gotten you quicker results at a lower cost.

Typically I've waited under 30 minutes, and now days some have online wait time estimators, and at larger facilities x-rays are right down the hall.

Re: McKinsey Proposed Paying Pharmacy Companies Rebates for OxyContin Overdoses

#68

Post by burnthrow »

smabie wrote: post #63
boringg wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously, they have taken a real nose dive. I wonder if they still have MBAs competing for their jobs or if this has taken out the top level talent (and shipped it over to SV)

Top level talent never joined consulting in the first place. Wall St is considered by most a more desirable and prestigious career path. It's also usually more lucrative. Traders and investment bankers especially consider consultants to be major losers (including me).

Investment banker thinks somebody who makes less money than them is a loser, more at 11.

Re: McKinsey Proposed Paying Pharmacy Companies Rebates for OxyContin Overdoses

#70

Post by smabie »

troughway wrote: post #60
newbie789 wrote: post #55

I've at this point had (at least) eight friends die from opioid overdoses in the past ~10 years. I myself was nearly one of them a long time ago. It's really disappointing to see this bullshit.

Forgive me for sounding daft. I feel reluctant taking one Tylenol pill nevermind anything close to this - how exactly have you had at least eight friends die? Was it accidental? Uncontrolled dosage? Suicide? Do you forget that you had taken it already? I keep hearing about the opioid deaths and the crisis but what exactly happens that these people overdose on it?

heroin can be of greatly varying strength, especially nowadays when you sometimes/often get fentanyl. I used to be addicted to opiates for a period of 2 years (with maybe 3 years of recreational use before things got bad), ending in 2017.

I have had a very close friend die from a heroin/fentanyl overdose, getting a PhD at the time. I say this to emphasize that even very smart, careful, and reasonable people can overdose and die. I've come close myself a couple times.

I would imagine accidental death from pharmaceuticals is much rarer, as the potency is consistent.

I'm convinced if we just completely legalized all of this stuff a better outcome would ensue. After all, there are two primary negative effects of illicit opiates in our current system: high stdev of potency, and high cost. Under legalization, the stdev could be reduced to 0 and the cost could be brought down 10 or 100 fold.

Post reply on HN