Document Type

Working Paper

Publication Date

3-30-2020

SSRN Discipline

Experimental & Empirical Studies eJournals; Medical Specialties eJournals; LSN Subject Matter eJournals; Health Economics Network; MedRN Subject Matter eJournals; Management Research Network; Economics Research Network; Legal Scholarship Network; HEN Subject Matter eJournals; Law School Research Papers - Legal Studies; Corporate Governance Network; Medical Research Network; Health Law eJournals

Abstract

Unlike past public health crises the opioid crisis arose from within the healthcare system itself Entities within that system particularly opioid manufacturers may bear some liability in sparking and perpetuating the current crisis Unsurprisingly the allegations underlying the thousands of claims filed in connection with the opioid crisis differ substantially However almost all of those claims rely to some degree on the strength of the relationship between opioid manufacturers and the healthcare providers who prescribed their products This Article argues that the underlying relationship is the heart of the crisis and that this problematic relationship is by no means a thing of the pastbrbrThis Article provides critically important empirical evidence on the providermanufacturer relationship Analyzing a novel dataset constructed solely for this Article we examine the role of payments from pharmaceutical companies to healthcare providers in inducing the latter to prescribe more opioids Our analysis reveals robust and consistent empirical evidence that pharmaceutical companies continue to pay healthcare providers and providers receiving higher levels of payments prescribe more opioids Our analysis is limited to legal payments so it cannot establish any basis of liability by itself However the relationships elucidated by our empirical evidence are the types that can facilitate the activities plaintiffs in the ongoing opioid litigation have alleged Thus the evidence developed and presented in this Article provides critically important insight into the role of manufacturers in the opioid crisis and into the litigation that crisis has generatedbr

Download

Share

COinS