In The News

According to a report from the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, employers have lost likely more than $2.5 billion annually due to employees who skip work or underperform because of their addiction. In addition, treating those people through opioid programs and services across systems in Massachusetts is estimated to be at least $5.5 billion.

“MTF hopes this report catalyzes greater urgency and engagement from all segments of our society in the battle against the scourge of this epidemic — particularly among Massachusetts employers — by exploring and explaining the economic and fiscal impacts of the opioid epidemic on the state,” the group wrote. “We have no illusions that this crisis is fundamentally about economics. While the opioid epidemic is causing considerable costs across all major systems in our state, the primary costs of this crisis are its impact on human lives — and these are incalculable.”

According to a new report, the opioid epidemic is costing Massachusetts businesses more than $2.5 billion annually. The report from Boston public policy nonprofit Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation said that figure comes from lost productivity and absenteeism and presenteeism.

The study from the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation puts the cost to the state’s economy at $7 billion in lost business productivity. The report concludes the opioid crisis is far from over and is likely to get worse, as more lethal synthetic drugs such as fentanyl proliferate. The foundation is hosting a forum Friday in Boston on the opioid epidemic. Governor Charlie Baker and Attorney General Maura Healey are scheduled to participate.

"They're staggering," says Eileen McAnneny, MTF president, of the dollars spent on hospital care, EMTs, early intervention for infants and families, jails and the job productivity forfeited by individuals and employers. "We wanted folks to get a sense of the pervasiveness. It really impacts all major areas: health care, criminal justice, public safety and businesses."

“There’s an old business school adage that you can’t manage what you can’t measure, so we thought that quantifying the cost and providing a sense of the magnitude would motivate employers to engage more on this issue,” said foundation president Eileen McAnneny. “The economic impact is a crisis itself.” One big reason the opioid epidemic should worry employers is that it threatens to make it harder to find and keep employees in an already tight labor market, McAnneny said.

The taxpayers foundation estimates that opioid addiction kept nearly 33,000 people from participating in the labor force each year, on average, over the past five years. And the annual costs to health care providers total nearly $1 billion, some of which is paid by the taxpayer-funded MassHealth and other insurance programs.

"We have made tremendous progress, but we really need to have a bigger cushion," said Eileen McAnneny, president of the nonpartisan Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation. The rainy day fund’s balance compared to the state's $41 billion operating budget — the most common metric of a reserve fund’s health — is about 4.9 percent, she said. It was about 7.7 percent in the fiscal year before the recession. "We clearly still have a way to go," McAnneny said. "The credit ratings agencies would prefer that we be closer to 10 percent."

On the Wednesday, November 14 edition of Bloomberg Baystate Business we spoke with Eileen McAnneny, President of the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, about their study on the economic impact of the opioid crisis on Massachusetts.

The fiscal 2019 state budget bill on Gov. Charlie Baker's desk counts on $63 million in legal marijuana taxes, a total the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation says is unlikely to materialize. The foundation last week wrote in its analysis of the state budget bill that the marijuana licensing process "has proceeded more slowly than anticipated."