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McKinsey to pay $573M to settle claims over opioid crisis role: source

reuters.com

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Re: McKinsey to pay $573M to settle claims over opioid crisis role: source

#181

Post by ThrustVectoring »

iujjkfjdkkdkf wrote: post #93

The war on drugs is responsible for the opioid crisis. Companies psychopathically seek out profits, and need to be kept in check, but that does not diminish the fact that US (and Canadian) drug policy bears direct responsibility for opioid deaths. This kind of news story, while maybe satisfying, is a red herring. As long as addiction is criminalized, and legal drug supplies dont exist, it doesn't matter how many Purd…

The opioid crisis would have happened without the war on drugs. The fundamental driver of it is Oxycontin's dosing schedule, which was optimized for causing addiction. Marketing for Oxycontin is all about how it "lasts twelve hours", when it often doesn't. Doctors were trained and pressured to increase the prescribed dose when patients complained of pain in the hours before their next scheduled dose, rather than switching to something like an every-eight-hours schedule.

The end result is a medication profile with a pronounced sawtooth pattern. On a daily basis, patients get relief from pain, suffer waiting for their next dose through a few hours of agony, and then get relief again. If they try to fix this problem and complain of untreated pain, the doctor ups their dosage and makes the sawtooth even worse.

What the war on drugs does is add inflexibility and a criminal dimension to the newly-minted opioid addict's interaction with society. Run out because you accelerated your dosing schedule in order to avoid hours of daily agony? You're not allowed to refill early for any reason whatsoever, and it may get you a drug-seeking label that kicks you out of the official reason entirely.

Re: McKinsey to pay $573M to settle claims over opioid crisis role: source

#182

Post by cosmodisk »

joshgachnang wrote: post #121
andreilys wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

”Bringing in consultants is, among other ways, a way to bring in people who can get shit done, moving bricks at lower levels of the org with the political mandate of the top” It seems more likely that it’s a politically expedient way to get cover for a decision (in other words CYA insurance). If the plan fails, blame the consultants. If it works, take credit for having brought them in. It also puts more pressure on e…

Yup, freelance software dev here, and I've been that consultant before for a large healthcare company. They had a new VP and he wanted to make changes to the app and org but needed a report from an external consultant to CYA. He already knew what he wanted the report to say and was not subtle on it. I talked to a couple people in the org, wrote a quick report basically signing off on his plan, and got paid handsomely…

I don't think it's ridiculous, it's how things work in many companies. People use various methods and tricks trying to convince others or get what they want from them. Sometimes the CEO is hesitant and needs a push from the consultancy,sometimes it's power games and etc. Most businesses have these things, it's not unique,even though some people would like to believe it.

Re: McKinsey to pay $573M to settle claims over opioid crisis role: source

#183

Post by toby »

hirple wrote: post #31
the_drunkard wrote: post #9

McKinsey or its partners have been directly involved in Enron, Valeant, and now an opioid crisis that's claimed thousands (if not millions of lives). "In for a penny, in for a pound" - this should be McKinsey's new corporate slogan. Valeant article: https://www.ft.com/content/0bb37fd2-ef63-11e5-aff5-19b4e2536... Enron article: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2002/mar/24/enron.theob...

McKinsey are involved in almost every company in the Fortune 500, and have been for decades. Of course they're going to be around for almost any given corporate failure.

Totally agree, this is cherry-picking.

I don't have an opinion on how useful McKinsey is, but I'll note that no one is pointing out that they also did a lot of work for Microsoft before their big turnaround.

Re: McKinsey to pay $573M to settle claims over opioid crisis role: source

#184

Post by ghaff »

klmadfejno wrote: post #39
tharne wrote: post #4

Too bad they can't be sued for ruining countless businesses with mindless self-serving "advice" meant to do nothing more than get their contracts re-upped. The whole business is a scam built around sending in some 26 year-old with an Ivy League degree and $100 haircut to regurgitate snippets from articles in HBR.

I'm a 20 something McK consultant with a $10 haircut. Maybe $20 with tip. Or $0 now, because it's done at home. I post this fairly frequently, but here we go again. Business is hard. Change is hard. Consultants get a lot of shit for saying things that someone lower in the org could have told them. That's not evidence of abuse, that's evidence that your org isn't working well. A lot of the time substantial portions of…

As someone who worked with McKinsey consultants in a past life, this seems pretty spot on. The partner and one of their associates were sharp. The other associate mostly got arrogant. They were brought in around a new product line I was the product manager of. Yes, they spent lots of time interviewing us and basically validated what we told them.

That said, they presumably gave executive management some warm and fuzzies that we weren't smoking weed. Sure, they could have just taken our word for what we were telling them, but having a second pair of eyes is actually not a terrible thing. (And it's part of what I did for clients in a subsequent job.) They also gave our business planning people some complicated financial modeling spreadsheet which kept them busy and mostly out of our hair.)

Re: McKinsey to pay $573M to settle claims over opioid crisis role: source

#185

Post by exikyut »

jancsika wrote: post #106
klmadfejno wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a 20 something McK consultant with a $10 haircut. Maybe $20 with tip. Or $0 now, because it's done at home. I post this fairly frequently, but here we go again. Business is hard. Change is hard. Consultants get a lot of shit for saying things that someone lower in the org could have told them. That's not evidence of abuse, that's evidence that your org isn't working well. A lot of the time substantial portions of…

Whether this is a bona fide comment or a troll, I love this comment: * quick witted aikido-move-of-a-sentence to accept OP's insult, thereby disarming it * enormous paragraph made up of short, frank, vague sentences with an compelling rhythm of overarching claims that frame the 20-something haircut's ostensible work in a positive light. It's the wrong generation but I'm reading them in Ari Fleischer's no-nonsense, et…

> ...run of the mill consultents.

You spelled consultants wrong :P

(Boring clarification: riffing off of your "spelled industry wrong!" bit. Not an actual attack.)

I definitely need to learn lucidity or awareness or whatever it is that you springboard off of to be able to read something like this and mentally *hangonaminute* though... I completely went along agreeing with everything, and while I still do after having paused and considered, this isn't the first time I've needed another comment to help with the initial "you're completely not noticing this subtlety here".

Re: McKinsey to pay $573M to settle claims over opioid crisis role: source

#186

Post by dannyphantom »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #165
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consultancy sounds fancy, but when it comes down to it it's fairly mundane. I used to be in consultancy as a software dev, it's basically same job, higher cost. But these companies use consultants because they have tons of money but aren't sexy enough to attract internal employees that do the same thing.

> But these companies use consultants because they have tons of money but aren't sexy enough to attract internal employees that do the same thing. Does not sexy mean they are not willing to spend the tons of money they have on internal employees?

Exactly.

Re: McKinsey to pay $573M to settle claims over opioid crisis role: source

#187

Post by r00fus »

jancsika wrote: post #106
klmadfejno wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a 20 something McK consultant with a $10 haircut. Maybe $20 with tip. Or $0 now, because it's done at home. I post this fairly frequently, but here we go again. Business is hard. Change is hard. Consultants get a lot of shit for saying things that someone lower in the org could have told them. That's not evidence of abuse, that's evidence that your org isn't working well. A lot of the time substantial portions of…

Whether this is a bona fide comment or a troll, I love this comment: * quick witted aikido-move-of-a-sentence to accept OP's insult, thereby disarming it * enormous paragraph made up of short, frank, vague sentences with an compelling rhythm of overarching claims that frame the 20-something haircut's ostensible work in a positive light. It's the wrong generation but I'm reading them in Ari Fleischer's no-nonsense, et…

All valid points, but diluting them a bit by accusing others of spelling mistakes when committing them yourself.

s/consultents/consultants/

Re: McKinsey to pay $573M to settle claims over opioid crisis role: source

#189

Post by Fiahil »

tharne wrote: post #4

Too bad they can't be sued for ruining countless businesses with mindless self-serving "advice" meant to do nothing more than get their contracts re-upped. The whole business is a scam built around sending in some 26 year-old with an Ivy League degree and $100 haircut to regurgitate snippets from articles in HBR.

I'm not from McKinsey, but from BCG Gamma (speaking from my own PoV, of course).

One thing I've learned over time: expensive fees are a feature, not a bug.

People will listen more to what you have to say about any topic if they're paying a few hundred $K for that. And the same goes when you need to deliver a new tool to your client. Being expensive means my IT tickets won't be shelved for a week or two because some guy didn't like my face. It's often the case where a 3 weeks process with a five-people-approval form gets shortened to a single zoom meeting plus an email, and I really like that :). That's the difference between a 8 weeks project being put in production two weeks early and already getting traction because the "business people" are more engaged ; and a 2 years project going nowhere because the team gets shuffled constantly and requirements keeps changing.

PS: It only works if you can deliver what you promised, though

Re: McKinsey to pay $573M to settle claims over opioid crisis role: source

#190

Post by vypr007 »

Approaching this from a cold math perspective, like a McK consultant would.. $573M settlement for approx 450k deaths, is a a little over $1200 per death if that is given away as compensation at all.

Not bad for McK I'd say. The consultants really managed this well.

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