WellPoint expects employer biz to stagnate
Over the next five years, WellPoint Inc. expects the employer-sponsored insurance business to shrink slightly, forcing it to shift its focus to government-sponsored plans.
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In a deal with Eli Lilly and Co., New York-based Advion BioSciences Inc. will open a 22,000-square-foot drug discovery bioanalytical laboratory in May at the Purdue Research Park in Indianapolis. Lilly, the Indianapolis-based drugmaker, will move its own drug-discovery bioanalytical operations to Advion as part of the partnership and retain some oversight. The lab initially will employ 49 people and could ramp up to 66 workers by 2015. Lilly expects 26 employees to lose their jobs but will be able to apply for limited positions within Lilly or at Advion’s Indianapolis lab. Advion will focus on earlier-stage, drug-discovery bioanalytical services, which evaluate how a potential new medicine is absorbed and metabolized in experimental models. Many of the activities performed at the lab are required for the preparation of a molecule’s entry into human testing. Indiana Economic Development Corp. offered Advion up to $650,000 in performance-based tax credits and up to $30,000 in training grants based on the company's job-creation plans. Develop Indy will provide additional training funding and support property-tax abatement from the city of Indianapolis.
Hall, Render, Killian, Heath & Lyman added 24 attorneys last year as the health reform law generated a wave of legal work for its clients. Of those new hires, four were added to Hall Render’s headquarters office in Indianapolis, with the rest spread among the firm’s offices in Milwaukee, Louisville and Troy, Mich. Hall Render already had the second-most health care attorneys of any firm in the nation, according to a ranking published in June 2010 by Modern Healthcare magazine. Hall Render now has more than 150 attorneys who are members of the American Health Lawyers Association. The firm with the most health attorneys last year was Atlanta-based King & Spalding, with 229.
People
Managed Health Services, which administers health benefits for Indiana Medicaid, has hired Holly L. Ross as its finance manager. Managed Health is a subsidiary of St. Louis-based Centene Corp. Ross previously served as the senior accountant and financial analyst for KForce in Indianapolis.
Bioanalytical Systems Inc. added Brad Gien to its Culex services team, which performs pre-clinical testing of experimental drug compounds. Gien comes to West Lafayette-based Bioanalytical from NoAb BioDiscoveries in Ontario, Canada.
WellPoint Inc. named Nick Brecker president of specialty markets for most of its business lines. His previous position as president of life and disability insurance is being filled by Pat Murphy. Murphy was previously the functional chief financial officer for WellPoint’s information technology team.
2011 Health Care Heroes: Quality Health First Program
FINALIST: Community Achievement in Health Care
Governor will damage public schools
Things are getting crazy as state resources diminish. Our governor is clearly out of touch with reality. He wants to abolish the 1:600 ratio for elementary school counselors to students on top of drastically cutting back state-supported mental-health programs.
Who’s Who in Hospitality – 2011
Every business sector has influential players, whether they are in the public eye or wield their influence behind the scenes.
Others states’ fights bring focus to Gov. Daniels
Gov. Mitch Daniels has spent years talking about issues that typically make voters' eyes glaze over: Cutting spending. Balancing budgets. Shrinking government. The priorities haven't changed much in Daniels' six years as governor. But suddenly voters are paying attention.
Indiana must limit immigration
It always amazes me that the obvious results of exporting jobs, importing workers and engaging in other forms of labor and environmental arbitrage are a mystery to newspaper editorialists and many of our so-called public leaders.
Indianapolis’ Christ Church Cathedral supports rebuilding of cathedral in Haiti
The local church is joining Trinity Wall Street Church in New York in donating to reconstruction of the building destroyed in the January 2010 earthquake.
Study shows state’s air quality improving
A federal study shows that Indiana has a lower estimated health risk from air toxins compared with many surrounding states.
Indiana Medicaid mental health list worries advocates
The state budget bill moving through the Indiana General Assembly would save about $7 million each year by creating a list of preferred mental health drugs and trying to win larger rebates from manufacturers.
Company news
Republicans in the state Legislature are advancing a budget that would carve $7 million a year from the Indiana Medicaid plan by creating a list of preferred mental health drugs based at least partly on rebates negotiated with drug manufacturers, according to the Associated Press. Indiana is one of only nine states that does not have such a list. But groups representing doctors and patients say the money-saving could be eaten up if patients suffering from mental illnesses are unable to get the drugs they need, possibly leading to expensive hospital stays or even run-ins with police. Medicaid enrolls more than 1 million low-income Hoosiers in such programs as Hoosier Healthwise for children and pregnant woman, the Healthy Indiana Plan for uninsured, and Care Select for the disabled. The provision in the budget bill would require doctors to seek prior authorization from Medicaid to prescribe drugs not on the authorized list. However, psychiatrists would not need prior authorizations.
Elanco, the animal health division of Eli Lilly and Co., has agreed to acquire Jannsen Animal Health, a subsidiary of New Jersey-based Johnson & Johnson, pending regulatory approval. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. But Elanco, based in Greenfield, would acquire about 50 animal health products that Janssen sells in Europe, mostly focused on pigs, poultry and pets. Elanco also would bring on an unspecified number of Janssen’s employees. Elanco currently employs 2,300 people in more than 40 countries. Lilly has been trying to grow its animal health business through acquisitions in order to build up revenue expected to be lost late this year when its best-selling human drug Zyprexa faces competition from cheaper generic copies. They will sap most of Zyprexa’s $5 billion a year in sales. Last year, Elanco pulled in revenue of nearly $1.4 billion, up 15 percent from the previous year. Elanco’s drugs are mainly for pigs, poultry, cows and pets.
Healthy Indiana Plan expansion opposed by some
Indiana wants to use its public health savings account program for low-income adults to cover people who will become newly eligible for Medicaid under the federal health care law beginning in 2014.
Company news
Zimmer Holdings Inc. and Biomet Inc., both based in Warsaw, are among the bidders for AstraZeneca Plc’s Astra Tech, a Swedish unit that makes dental implants and medical devices, reported Bloomberg, citing two people with direct knowledge of the matter. Astra Tech may sell for $1.8 billion to $2.1 billion, according to a research note by analysts at Sanford C. Bernstein. Astra Tech, which also makes medical devices for urology and surgery, had sales last year of $535 million. It employs 2,200 and operates in 16 markets. Separately, Zimmer won a $13.5 million contract to sell orthopedic implants to the U.S. Department of Defense. The new contract is guaranteed for one year, with the possibility of four one-year renewals.
Elanco, the animal health unit of Indianapolis-based Eli Lilly and Co., which this month agreed to acquire Johnson & Johnson’s European animal health unit, also had its eyes on another target, according to a Reuters report. A now-abandoned joint venture between the animal health businesses of New Jersey-based Merck & Co. Inc. and France-based Sanofi-Aventis SA anticipated selling off some assets for roughly $1 billion, according to unnamed sources cited by Reuters. The news agency reported that Elanco paid roughly $300 million to Johnson & Johnson, in order to acquire 50 animal health medicines sold under the name Janssen Animal Health. Elanco is the world’s fourth-largest animal health company, with $1.4 billion in annual revenue.
How’s this for financing drug development? Even though it hadn’t brought a single product even close to the market, Carmel-based Marcadia Biotech Inc. was sitting on $37 million in cash when it agreed to sell itself in December to Switzerland-based Roche. The money piled up not from venture capitalists but through Marcadia’s research partnerships with large pharmaceutical companies, primarily with New Jersey-based Merck & Co. Inc. “Our venture-capital firms were going crazy. They never had a company that had to pay taxes,” said Fritz French, former CEO of the 11-person firm, which had attracted $15 million from investors early in its existence. French and his management team sold Marcadia for $287 million, with the possibility of reaping $250 million more if one of Marcadia’s experimental diabetes drugs makes it to market.
Elkhart General Healthcare System and Memorial Hospital and Health System of South Bend have agreed to merge. The two hospitals signed a memorandum of understanding to develop a parent organization that will operate both systems. Memorial CEO Phil Newbold will lead the combined organization. According to Newbold, the affiliation will attract more physicians to engage with the new system and help direct its future. “Together, Elkhart General and Memorial will have more than 700 highly skilled, well-trained physicians on staff. This shared medical expertise will enable us to attract even more specialized professionals to the area and produce the region’s highest quality of care,” Newbold said. Memorial Hospital boasts 526 beds. Elkhart General has 325 beds.
Growth funding drying up in Indianapolis
A key financial stepping stone for Indianapolis-area startups is dwindling, with no significant replacement on the horizon.
FRIEDMAN: Fiscal, environmental mess cries for leaders
The world is caught in a dangerous feedback loop—higher oil prices and climate disruptions lead to higher food prices, higher food prices lead to more instability, more instability leads to higher oil prices.
KENNEDY: About those intended and unintended consequences …
Even if one believes that same-sex marriages are a “problem,” enacting House Joint Resolution 6 will change nothing.