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West Virginia University President Gordon Gee and former Ohio Gov. John Kasich are creating a nonprofit that will fight to steer cash from any national opioid settlement to hospitals, rather than to local and state governments already sparring for control of the dollars.

As a landmark trial over the opioid crisis grows closer, Endo International (ENDP) agreed to a $10 million settlement with two Ohio counties that claimed the drug maker contributed to the problem by inappropriately marketing its addictive painkillers.

Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost said he wants "a good settlement for Ohio", but the state is still preparing to move forward with civil cases against drug companies. His comments came Monday as he addressed the opioid epidemic that has ravaged the state.

Ohio sues opioid makers, distributors — while giving them large tax breaks

Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost joined several other state attorneys general in a letter to Congress that requests increased health care access for people struggling with opioid addiction.

Ohio and many other states — as well as 1,800 cities and counties — are suing the Dublin-based drug wholesaler, arguing Cardinal ignored a suspicious rise in opioid orders as communities drowned in addictive prescription drugs.

An executive at Dublin-based Cardinal Health, one of the nation's largest drug distribution companies, said under questioning recently that the business has no obligation to the public when it comes to the amount of prescription opioid painkillers it ships.

Drug companies doled out more than 3.7 billion prescription painkillers in Ohio during a seven-year period in the years preceding an opioid epidemic that cost thousands of lives and millions of dollars, according to a cleveland.com analysis of information in a government-maintained database.