CVS, Walgreens to pay out $450M to Pennsylvania in opioid settlement
By Anthony Hennen | The Center Square
HARRISBURG, PA – As the opioid crisis continues to kill thousands of Pennsylvanians a year, another recent settlement means almost half a billion dollars to fund addiction recovery and other opioid-related programs will come to the commonwealth.
Attorney General Josh Shapiro announced that Pennsylvania will receive about $450 million from CVS and Walgreens as part of a national settlement worth $10.7 billion.
“No amount of money will bring back the lives we lost, but today’s agreement with CVS and Walgreens will help to ensure Pennsylvanians suffering from opioid addiction get the treatment and recovery resources they need,” Shapiro said in a release. “My office is determined to hold accountable the greedy companies that created and jet-fueled the opioid epidemic.”
The settlement follows a similar one in November with Walmart, which will send $120 million to Pennsylvania, as The Center Square previously reported, and another national settlement with pharmaceutical distributors Cardinal, McKesson, and AmerisourceBergen and opioid manufacturer Johnson & Johnson that provided Pennsylvania with $1 billion.
The attorney general noted that most of Walmart’s funds will be paid in the first year of the settlement, while CVS’s payments will be staggered over 10 years and 15 years from Walgreens.
“Nearly all of the settlement funds must be used to remediate the opioid crisis, including prevention, harm reduction, treatment, and recovery services,” the attorney general’s office said.
Overall, Pennsylvania has received $2.2 billion from investigations and lawsuits against the pharmaceutical industry tied to the opioid crisis.
Those funds will be spent through the Pennsylvania Opioid Misuse and Addiction Abatement Trust, created to oversee and monitor how the money gets used.
County governments have responsibility for most of it, 70%, with the General Assembly spending 15% of the funds and another 15% going to other uses by counties, district attorneys, cities, and other government entities.
States have wide latitude to decide how to spend the opioid funds. Ohio created a foundation to oversee it, though it faces a lawsuit over its lack of transparency. Funds from the national settlement aren’t a free-for-all, however; spending must fall under one of 15 remediation uses, as The Center Square previously reported.
