Health Care

It hasn’t been easy the last few years to be a shareholder of Eli Lilly and Co. Lilly’s stock price has languished as the company’s vaunted drug pipeline has suffered hiccups and as legal troubles over its best-selling drug, Zyprexa, have lingered. So as Lilly shareholders gather April 16 for their annual meeting, two key questions hang in the air. Both center on Zyprexa, an anti-schizophrenia drug, which accounts for one-quarter of Lilly’s revenue and even more of its profit….

It’s a program with big promises and big profits. Yet it’s hard to measure its payoff. It’s disease management-an industry euphemism for health insurers’ efforts to make sure chronically ill customers receive the best health care they can-before they get rushed to the hospital. Indianapolis-based WellPoint Inc. says disease management helps it win business over other health benefits companies. It also says it saves its customers nearly three times as much money as they invest and improves the quality of…

Indianapolis-based WellPoint Inc. is in a tussle with the nation’s largest drug maker over the nation’s top-selling drug. New York-based Pfizer Inc., facing the loss of billions in sales of its Lipitor cholesterol-fighting drug, sent letters last month to doctors, encouraging them to protest the attempts of health benefits firms to switch patients to generic cholesterol drugs. The letter, which says the change is being pushed “for cost reasons alone,” reached doctors several days after Well-Point expanded a promotion to…