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The drug policy world has been left torn by the Supreme Court’s ruling on Thursday that Purdue Pharma’s bankruptcy deal could not move forward if it included legal protections for the company’s billionaire owners. In one camp are those who were eager to see the agreed-upon $6 billion settlement put to work preventing and treating opioid addiction. In the other are those who found the prospect of shielding the Sackler family from civil lawsuits to be indefensible. (Facher, 6/28)

Bankruptcy may become a less attractive way to resolve sprawling lawsuits after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling scuttled OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma's Chapter 11 settlement and sharply scaled back a court's ability to wipe away legal claims against entities that have not filed for bankruptcy themselves. Bankruptcy courts offer several attractive tools for companies and other organizations to settle mass tort litigation, which have been used in cases involving claims of widespread sexual abuse against Catholic dioceses and the Boy Scouts of America, the marketing and sale of addictive opioid painkillers, and that consumer products cause cancer. (Knauth, 6/27)

Â鶹ŮÓÅ Health News: Supreme Court Upends Purdue Pharma Opioid Settlement

In a 5-4 vote, the court ruled that the Sackler family cannot be shielded from future claims through Purdue’s bankruptcy. Since the case was first heard, victims of the opioid crisis and recovery advocates have been split on the desired outcome. Some wanted the bankruptcy deal to go through so that settlement money could start flowing and fund urgently needed addiction services. Others said it would be unacceptable to allow the Sacklers to evade responsibility for their actions. (Pattani, 6/27)

Some people who lost family members to opioids expressed shock and sadness, but also a resolve to keep fighting, after the Supreme Court on Thursday torpedoed a massive settlement for victims of the drug crisis. "I felt like someone came up and punched me in the stomach," Jill Cichowicz, whose twin brother, Scott Zebrowski, collapsed in a California parking lot and died of fentanyl poisoning after he took what he thought was OxyContin in 2017, said. "It kind of equated to the day that he died," Cichowicz, who founded a nonprofit group called Two in the Stigma, said in an interview that aired on NBC News' "Hallie Jackson Now." (Helsel and Lubbehusen, 6/27)

UnitedHealth Group's OptumRx pharmacy benefit manager unit has agreed to pay $20 million to settle claims by U.S. authorities that it improperly filled certain opioid prescriptions, the U.S. Justice Department announced on Thursday. The settlement appeared to be the first reached by the government with a pharmacy benefit manager (PBM) over allegedly illicit opioid prescriptions. (Pierson, 6/27)

Michigan lawmakers have approved $48.2 million to fight the opioid epidemic, more than doubling the amount the state’s health department had planned to spend in the coming budget year. ... The spending, included in the 2024-25 budget approved early Thursday, comes from settlements with opioid manufacturers and distributors who were deemed to be partly responsible for the explosion of opioids that now kill close to 3,000 Michiganders a year. (French and Erb, 6/27)