Latest Blogs
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Kim and Todd Saxton: Go for the gold! But maybe not every time.
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Q&A: What you need to know about the CDC’s new mask guidance
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Carmel distiller turns hand sanitizer pivot into a community fundraising platform
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Lebanon considering creating $13.7M in trails, green space for business park
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Local senior-living complex more than doubles assisted-living units in $5M expansion
There will be blood
A new study found that common blood tests performed by hospital-owned facilities in the Indianapolis area were six to nine times more expensive than the same tests at independent lab facilities. Ouch!
How to judge Obamacare
Health care and health insurance were a mess long before Obamacare—and on a path to getting messier. That makes it awfully difficult to figure out how much blame and credit to give the law as it plays out in the marketplace. Here's my approach.
Why hospitals leave the inner city, in one chart
Since hospitals lose money on just about every patient except those with private insurance, they have been closing inner-city facilities and opening new facilities in the suburbs for the past four decades.
No, Community didn’t make a list of 1,000 people to fire
My post on a presentation by Community Health Network CEO Bryan Mills was interpreted in a stronger way than I intended. So let me set the record straight.
The worries of a hospital CEO
In a video presentation to his employees, Community Health CEO Bryan Mills discusses the threats hospitals face from retail clinics and employers—and how Community briefly discussed laying off 1,000 workers last year.
Why Obamacare is likely to fail in Indiana (and most other states, too)
New data show eight out of 10 Hoosiers with private health insurance are covered by employer plans that are exempt from most Obamacare rules. So, rather than being an invasive train wreck, Obamacare may fail because it doesn’t affect enough people.
GOP politico creates health clinic for the Obamacare age
Brose McVey is leading a new health care clinic company that is squarely aimed at helping individuals, the self-employed and even large businesses deal with the new health care reality that is emerging under Obamacare.
The real health care money in this town is at IU Health
While the biggest hospital profit margins are made in the suburbs, the biggest pile of cash—$353 million in 2012—is made at the three downtown campuses run by Indiana University Health. In fact, those hospitals generated 32 percent of all operating gains posted by central Indiana hospitals in 2012.
Why are we so fat? Our food, health care are so cheap
Two new studies show that Americans have every economic incentive to consume too much food and then, when that overeating creates health problems for them, to consume lots of health care to fix it.
Rotten Teeth Report Card
Indiana ranks 10th in the nation for the highest spending on health care and 10th in the nation for the number of adults missing six or more teeth. That’s not a coincidence. Hoosiers do a poor job of taking care of themselves, and we end up paying for it in higher taxes and health insurance premiums.
Dropping health plan for Obamacare, this firm saved money but sacrificed choice
RANAC Corp., a small firm in Indianapolis, cut its spending on health benefits 25 percent after dropping its group health plan. Could it be a sign of things to come?
Pence’s HIP 2.0 insurance expansion has national aspirations all over it
Gov. Pence's HIP 2.0 plan is nothing less than an attempt to roll back liberal policy on low-income health benefits as far as currently possible–and to get other states to follow suit. It might even be an opening bid for president.
Marathon talks yield good deal for hospitals in Pence’s HIP expansion
Fees on hospitals will generate the lion’s share of the funds for Gov. Mike Pence’s Healthy Indiana Plan expansion. But the benefits hospitals will receive will outweigh those costs.
Study: Hospital-doctor hook-ups swell prices
Now that Indianapolis-area hospitals employ large numbers of physicians, a new study suggests the integrated health systems will be able to charge higher prices to private health insurers.
Indy’s most profitable hospitals, revisited
On the eve of Obamacare, almost no central Indiana hospitals were having trouble making money. Hip replacements, heart surgery and Hamilton County were the biggest drivers of profits.
Time to eat crow and fix my error on Obamacare sign-ups
When I predicted on March 13 that Obamacare would fail to expand individual private insurance coverage in Indiana, I was completely off. It now looks like an extra 30,000 Hoosiers have bought individual health insurance this year.
A silver lining for Endocyte
The news this morning couldn’t have been worse for Endocyte Inc. But if it had to come, the timing couldn’t have been better–because it allowed Endocyte to raise a pile of cash to spend on the other drugs in its pipeline.
Enough blame to go around
A new report from the Commonwealth Fund provides plenty to criticize everyone involved in health care in Indiana: It shows health care costs run higher in Indiana than the rest of the country while patients’ health and the quality of health care providers in some key areas are worse.