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, marking a significant step toward what many hope will reflect an ideal healthcare system.
KFF Health News has been tracking how that money is used — or misused — nationwide, a critical part of their mission to provide inside healthcare reporting.
But determining how much of that windfall arrived in a specific county or city — and how much will follow in the future — can be challenging. Most localities are not required to make the information public, a gap in the healthcare content management system that complicates transparency.
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.
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 month.
KFF Health News downloaded the data on March 4 and transformed it from state-by-state spreadsheets with separate entries for each settling company to a searchable database. Users can determine the total dollar amount their city, county, or state has received or expects to receive each year, showcasing the healthcare storage systems in action.
Determining how much money has arrived is the first step in assessing whether the settlements will make a dent in the nation’s addiction crisis.
Although this is the most comprehensive data available at a national scale, it provides just a snapshot of all opioid settlement payouts.
The information currently reflects only the largest settlement to date: $26 billion to be paid by pharmaceutical distributors AmerisourceBergen (now called Cencora), Cardinal Health, and McKesson, as well as opioid manufacturer Janssen (now known as Johnson & Johnson Innovative Medicine).
Most states have also settled with drug manufacturers Teva and Allergan, as well as Walmart, Walgreens, and CVS. Petkauskas said BrownGreer began distributing payments from these five companies in 2024 and plans to update its data to reflect such payments in July.
Other settlements, including with OxyContin manufacturer Purdue, are still pending.
This data does not reflect additional settlements that some state and local governments have entered into beyond the national deals, such as the agreement between Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, and Ohio and regional supermarket chain Meijer.
As such, this database undercounts the amount of opioid settlement money most places have received and will receive.
Payment details for some states are not available because those states were not part of national settlement agreements, had unique settlement terms, or opted not to have their payments distributed via BrownGreer. A few examples include:
- Alabama and West Virginia declined to join several national settlements and instead reached individual settlements with many of these companies.
- Texas and Nevada were paid in full by Janssen outside of the national settlement, so their payout data reflects payments only from AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health, and McKesson.
- Florida, Louisiana, and Pennsylvania, among others, opted to receive a lump-sum payment via BrownGreer then distribute the money to localities themselves.
KFF Health News’ Colleen DeGuzman contributed to this report. Jai Aslam also contributed.
KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.
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