Report: State Contracts Boost Dem-Linked Lawyers, Not Consumers

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Real Clear Politics

Last year, McKinsey & Company, the global management consulting firm, agreed to pay nearly $600 million to settle complaints brought by 49 state attorneys general for its alleged role in exacerbating the opioid crisis. McKinsey was accused of helping to “turbo-charge” opioid sales by advising drug manufacturers to focus marketing efforts on doctors already writing the most prescriptions of the addictive painkillers.

From 1999 to 2019, more than 500,000 people died from opioid overdoses. Consumer advocates might expect at least some of that settlement money to trickle down to families who suffered and lost loved ones in the still-ongoing crisis.

 

But the first recipient of the windfall was a group of lawyers. The settlement deal allocated $15 million to the nonprofit National Association of Attorneys General with the remaining cash mainly slated for state government departments and state general fund accounts.

So much for the consumer protection the lawsuits promised. And it’s hardly an isolated case. Attorneys general – politicians who have to campaign for that role – and other state government entities often hire large private trial-lawyer firms to help prosecute their cases, entering into weak contracts that provide big fees for the firms but few guarantees that consumers will see any restitution from the legal action, according to a new report by the conservative Alliance for Consumers.

The report also notes that, though Democrats tend to boast about standing up to big business and protecting consumers, it’s Democratic politicians who appear to benefit most from weak public contracts, as well as their natural political ties to trial lawyers.