Track Opioid Settlement Payouts — to the Cent — in Your Community

By Aneri Pattani and Lydia Zuraw and Holly K. Hacker | KFF Health News | Word In Black (WIB) – State and local governments are receiving billions of dollars in settlements from companies that made, sold, or distributed prescription painkillers and were accused of fueling the opioid crisis. More than a dozen companies will pay the money over nearly two decades. As of late February 2024, more than $4.3 billion had landed in government coffers. BrownGreer, the court-appointed firm administering the settlements, tracks much of this data but kept it private until KFF Health News negotiated to obtain it last year. KFF Health News made that information public for the first time last June. RELATED:& This Drug Helps Treat& Opioid Addiction. Why Is it So Hard to Get?& Five months later, BrownGreer began quietly posting updated versions of the information on a public website. Roma Petkauskas, a partner at BrownGreer, told KFF Health News that the change was made to assist state and local governments in accessing the information easily and “to promote transparency into the administration” of the settlements. She said the data is updated “regularly when new payments are issued,” which can be as frequent as twice a...