Opioid settlements with companies like Purdue Pharma, Walmart, and Johnson & Johnson have led to headline-grabbing multibillion-dollar payouts, but most of the windfall is flowing to state and local governments, not directly to victims of the crisis.
Only a handful of companies—those that filed for bankruptcy, including Purdue Pharma, Mallinckrodt, Endo, and Rite Aid—have set aside payouts for individuals.
To qualify, people must have filed claims within a certain window and provided documents proving they were prescribed painkillers from that company. Even then, many victims will receive just a few thousand dollars, lawyers and advocates estimate. Most of these companies have not started paying yet, so victims might have to wait months or years more before seeing the cash.
In contrast, state and local governments have already received settlement money. To understand the size of those pay-outs, KFF Health News in January downloaded data from BrownGreer, the court-appointed firm administering many national opioid settlements, and used it to update a searchable database that allows users to determine how much their city, county, or state has received or expects to receive each year.
Governments are receiving that money because attorneys general argued that their states’ public safety, health, and social service systems were harmed by the opioid crisis. Jurisdictions are supposed to spend settlement money on addiction treatment, recovery, and prevention programs. But many affected individuals and families say governments have failed to adhere to that mission.
“At the very minimum, they could spend these dollars right to prevent the future loss of life,” said Ryan Hampton, a national recovery advocate and previous co-chair of a committee in the Purdue Pharma bankruptcy case, where he represented victims. “That is the opposite of what we’ve seen to date.”
In Pennsylvania, a group of bereaved family members raised similar concerns to Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro, who finalized opioid settlements when he was attorney general.
“Instead of directing funds toward evidence-based solutions, you and your administration have allowed counties to divert these resources into law enforcement, ineffective programs, and initiatives that already have other funding streams available—disrespecting both our families and the lives lost,” they wrote in a letter dated Feb. 14. “Meanwhile, bereaved families—many of whom have lost everything—have no financial relief.”
‘Governments were way more powerful’
To be sure, many governments have spent millions of settlement dollars on treatment programs, recovery support, distribution of overdose reversal medications, and other efforts. Some officials in charge of the money say those services, which reach many residents, can have a greater impact than individual payouts.
Will Simons, a spokesperson for the Pennsylvania governor, said in a statement that the Shapiro administration has invested nearly $90 million of settlement funds into treatment, recovery, harm reduction, and prevention initiatives, including prevention programs for youths, a drug and alcohol call center, and loan repayment programs aimed at retaining workers in the addiction treatment and recovery field.
Many of the awarded organizations “support families who have lost loved ones to this crisis, providing counseling and other family supports,” Simons said.
A few jurisdictions have created fairly modest funds directed at individuals, such as one in Boston to aid families who have lost loved ones to addiction, and a fund in Alabama for grandparents having to raise children because of parental substance use.
But nationwide, there’s little that resembles the widespread cash payments that many advocates, like Hampton, originally envisioned.
In the mid-2010s, Hampton said, he and other advocates considered filing class action lawsuits against pharmaceutical companies but realized they didn’t have the resources.
A few years later, when state attorneys general began pursuing cases against those companies, victims were thrilled, thinking they would finally get compensation alongside their governments. Hampton and other advocates held rallies, shared their stories publicly, and galvanized support for the states’ lawsuits.
In 2019, when Hampton became co-chair of the Official Committee of Unsecured Creditors in Purdue Pharma’s bankruptcy and arrived at the negotiating table with state attorneys general and other entities, he thought “everybody was there to take on the big bad pharmaceutical company and to put victims’ interests first,” he said.
But as the negotiation proceeded among various creditors vying for the company’s assets, he said, “governments were way more powerful than victims and believed that they were more harmed than victims in terms of cost.”
Details of the Purdue settlement are still being finalized, and payments are unlikely to start until next year, but estimates suggest state and local governments will receive the lion’s share, while more than 100,000 victims will split a fraction of the bankruptcy payout.
Mallinckrodt, a manufacturer of generic opioids, is the only company that had begun paying victims as of early 2025, said Frank Younes, a partner at the Nebraska-based law firm High & Younes, which is representing personal injury claimants in several opioid bankruptcies.
After paying roughly 25% in administrative fees to the national trust overseeing the bankruptcy and an additional 40% in attorney fees, some of his clients have received between $400 and $700, Younes said.
He expects payouts from two other companies—Endo and Rite Aid—”will be even lower.”
But many victims won’t receive anything. Some didn’t know they could file claims until it was too late. Others struggled to obtain medical records from shuttered doctors’ offices or pharmacies that didn’t retain older documents.
Out of nearly 20,000 people who contacted Younes’ firm to participate in the various opioid bankruptcies, he said, only about 3,500 were able to file.
