WellPoint: Consumers will control health insurance
The future of health insurance is lower profit margins and greater consumer control. WellPoint Inc. just bet $900 million on it.
Health Care & Life Sciences
Articles
IU research leads to new genetic test
It took the identification of 19 different genes for researchers at the Indiana University School of Medicine to develop a test for a rare form of cancer. But their gene-hunting has paid off, as a Texas-based company announced Monday the test is available for doctors to use.
WellPoint seeks to diversify by buying contacts retailer
WellPoint Inc. plans to buy lens retailer 1-800-Contacts Inc. in a deal worth an estimated $900 million, giving the insurer its first direct-to-consumer business outside selling individual health coverage.
WellPoint buying 1-800 Contacts for about $900M
The Indianapolis-based health insurer said 1-800 Contacts is attractive partly because it has bigger profit margins than its core insurance business, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Area company rolls out inventive wellness benefit
EMC Precision Machining in Sheridan will give each of its 93 employees a new bicycle Friday for exceeding company cost-cutting goals.
Mainstreet signs operator for new health care properties
A Cicero-based developer has signed a national senior-living company to operate four new properties it plans for Indiana.
Price hikes offset slower health care use
Newly available data from private health insurance plans show that price hikes by hospitals, doctors and drug companies have kept employer spending rising recently even as their employees and dependents have moderated their consumption of health care services.
BASI promises ‘never again’ after big losses
Bioanalytical Systems Inc.’s new CFO won praise this month for laying out an aggressive cost-cutting plan—but not before the rest of the company’s leaders got a tongue lashing for their past performance.
Fort Wayne health IT firm looks to Indianapolis for talent
By the end of 2012, Medical Informatics Engineering anticipates that its six-person Indianapolis workforce will have doubled to 12, then to as many as 25 over the following year or so.
Physician buyouts bruising hospitals
As St. Vincent Health has nearly doubled the number of physicians it employs over the past two years, the losses on those practices have mounted. And the same thing is happening at all the major Indianapolis hospital systems, as all have spent the past four years aggressively acquiring physician practices.
FDA’s $6.4B drug review fee plan passes Senate
The U.S. Senate voted to let regulators collect on a $6.4 billion fee agreement struck with Indianapolis-based Eli Lilly and Co., Medtronic Inc. and other companies to fund reviews of new drugs and medical devices through 2017.
Local WellPoint unit eliminating 112 employees
National Government Services Inc., which processes Medicare and Medicaid claims for the federal government, attributed the job reductions to the loss of a government contract. The subsidiary will still have about 500 workers in Indianapolis.
Howard officials OK hospital merger with Community
The merger of Kokomo’s Howard Regional Health System into Indianapolis-based Community Health Network received final approval Tuesday night.
Q&A
Since its acquisition last year by Florida-based AssuredPartners Inc., the Indiana operations of Neace Lukens has been looking more aggressively to acquire smaller benefits brokers. In the past month, Neace Lukens has announced deals to buy Benefit Concepts, a six-person benefits consultancy in Indianapolis, and Matrix Benefits and Consulting Group, a one-person benefits shop in Fort Wayne. Eric Chelovitz, managing director of Neace Lukens’ 34-person Indianapolis office, said he expects more consolidation in the industry.
IU Health will refund $280,000 to Medicare
Indiana University Health will refund the federal Medicare program $280,000 after an audit of almost 200 claims made by its downtown hospitals found nearly 18 percent of them had been billed improperly.
Price pressures could ground Lilly’s growth
Most analysts agree with Eli Lilly and Co.’s prediction that, after tough years from 2012 to 2014, the drugmaker will begin growing sales and profits again. But in a new report, BMO Capital Markets predicts Lilly will get stuck at a reduced level of revenue and profit in 2014 and stay there for years.
Potential Effient rival recommended for approval
Johnson & Johnson and Bayer AG’s blood-thinner Xarelto should be approved to help prevent heart attacks and strokes in patients with a common condition, a U.S. regulatory report recommended.
Good cholesterol may not lower heart risk, study suggests
Raising good cholesterol, a goal pursued by Eli Lilly and Co. as the next milestone in cardiac care, may not cut heart-attack risk, says a study that challenges the development of drugs that may someday generate billions of dollars in sales.
U.S. losing drug-research jobs to other countries
Eli Lilly and other big pharmaceutical companies are creating thousands of research jobs overseas as countries led by Singapore, Ireland and South Africa boost incentives.
Lilly unlikely to gain from Plavix patent loss, analyst says
Indianapolis-based Eli Lilly and Co. and London-based AstraZeneca Plc aren't expected to have an easier time gaining more of the market for blood thinners dominated by Bristol-Myers Squibb Co.’s Plavix after the drug loses U.S. patent protection Thursday.