McKinsey’s Business Model Is Unethical
The Purdue Pharma scandal is business as usual
Over the weekend, the New York Times published a damning piece revealing McKinsey Co. — the world’s largest consulting firm — worked with Purdue Pharma to incentivize pharmacies to write OxyCotin prescriptions. Their solution? To offer nearly $15,000 to pharmacies like CVS when one of their patients developed an addiction or overdosed on the opioid.
In a 2017 presentation, according to the records, which were filed in court on behalf of multiple state attorneys general, McKinsey laid out several options to shore up sales. One was to give Purdue’s distributors a rebate for every OxyContin overdose attributable to pills they sold.
The presentation estimated how many customers of companies including CVS and Anthem might overdose. It projected that in 2019, for example, 2,484 CVS customers would either have an overdose or develop an opioid use disorder. A rebate of $14,810 per “event” meant that Purdue would pay CVS $36.8 million that year. — Walt Bogdanich and Michael Forscythe, The New York Times
When Purdue Pharma went to court over their involvement in the opioid crisis — which has killed over 450,000 people — McKinsey apparently went into panic mode and did their best to distance themselves from the company and the scandal. One email shows they at the very least considered destroying documents.
All of this is outrageous, and in this writer’s opinion warrants an investigation and prison time for those involved. Unfortunately I’m not a lawyer, so my opinion doesn’t really matter.
What I can do is remind readers that this is not an isolated incident. McKinsey has drawn ire over the years for their “restructuring” practices that involve lay-offs for their clients simply to line the pockets of shareholders and executives.
This isn’t to say every consultant at McKinsey is some villain. In Seth Green’s essay on McKinsey, he outlines how the company is filled with good people, but the core principles of…
