Obamacare could, according to some health insurance experts, cause most small businesses to end their group health plans. Now a new venture-backed company opening up shop in Indiana is trying to make that prediction a reality.
Assembly Pharmaceuticals Inc., which had offices in Indiana, has merged with New York-based Ventrus Biosciences, a publicly traded drug development firm, to create Assembly Biosciences. The new company trades on the NASDAQ stock market under the ticker symbol ASMB. Assembly has been developing antiviral drugs focused on hepatitis B based on the scientific research of Adam Zlotnick, a professor of molecular and cellular biochemistry at the Indiana University Bloomington campus. Zlotnick co-founded Assembly in 2012 with IU chemist Richard DiMarchi; IU biochemist William Turner; Dr. Uri Lopatin, an infection disease researcher based in San Francisco; and Indianapolis entrepreneur Derek Small. Small will be chief operating officer of Assembly Biosciences.
Eli Lilly and Co. signed a $45 million drug-development deal with United Kingdom-based biotech company Immunocore Ltd., according to the Wall Street Journal. Immunocore is trying to develop injectable cancer treatments that would direct the immune system’s T cells to get inside cancer cells and kill them. Immunocore will receive $15 million from Lilly upfront for each of three drug programs that have not yet entered human testing. If Lilly decides to take the treatments into the next stage of development, Immunocore can either receive a fee of $10 million to co-invest and develop the drugs or let Lilly develop the drugs while still retaining a right to future royalties if the drugs hit the market. Last year, Immunocore signed partnership deals with four other drug companies: Roche, GlaxoSmithKline, AstraZeneca and Adaptimmune. Immunocore and Adaptimmune were previously one company called Avidex, formed based on patents licensed from the University of Oxford.
Indiana will be one of up to 20 new states in which Minnesota-based UnitedHealth Group will compete on the Obamacare exchanges later this year. The health insurance giant sold on just four Obamacare exchanges for 2014, but will greatly expand its activity selling policies for 2015, according to the Associated Press. In Indiana, UnitedHealth has told the Indiana Department of Insurance it expects to sign up about 5,000 customers via plans sold under the All Savers brand. UnitedHealth representatives have told Indiana health insurance brokers that the company will make plans available for 2015, even though the specific states in which UnitedHealth will sell on the Obamacare exchanges has not been publicly released by the company. The exchanges, which are online marketplaces for health insurance, are the only place consumers can access Obamacare’s generous tax credits to reduce the cost of health coverage. UnitedHealth CEO Stephen Hemsley told Wall Street analysts on July 17 that the exchanges will become a more established part of future health care benefits, and UnitedHealth doesn’t want to enter those markets too late.
This isn’t what St. Vincent Health wanted. The Indianapolis-based hospital system’s clerical error of May 5, which sent 63,325 letters about patients' upcoming appointments to the wrong people, is now being cited by the information technology world as an example of the surge in data breaches. Trade publication PC World referred to the data breach at the St. Vincent Breast Health Center in an article headlined, “The 5 biggest data breaches of 2014 (so far)” (although the St. Vincent breach, in sheer number of people affected, wasn’t actually one of the five largest breaches). Also, SC Magazine, a trade publication for IT security professionals, flagged the St. Vincent breach and even posted the letter the hospital system sent to its patients. According to the Identity Theft Resource Center, there have been 21 percent more data breaches publicly reported in the United States so far this year, compared with the same period in 2013.
The Indianapolis International Airport has planned nearly $8 million in garage maintenance over the next two years. It’s also looking into an alternative to its atrium canopy, which has collapsed twice in three years.
All of sudden, Hoosiers are buying less health care. Is that because we’ve kicked the habit, sobered up and found religion? Or is it the Great Recession hangover that will pass, eventually, so we can all get back to the party?
Documentary filmmaker Ted Green recently completed production of “Bobby Slick Leonard: Heart of a Hoosier,” a 90-minute documentary that will debut at Bankers Life Fieldhouse July 29.
Advances in non-invasive surgeries, changes in health care financing and now increasingly price-sensitive patients accelerate what has been a 40-year decline in the number of patients spending the night in hospitals.
Developer comes out on top after recession, legal battle with investor.
A music amphitheater soon will take center stage on the site of the former General Motors metal-stamping plant on the western edge of downtown, sources tell IBJ.
With federal health research funding in decline, Indianapolis-based Regenstrief Institute Inc. wants to make up the difference by serving pharmaceutical companies, medical device makers, health insurers and hospital systems.
Mayor Greg Ballard on Monday morning unveiled details of the plan, in which IUPUI and Lilly Endowment each contribute $10 million for the IU Natatorium renovation. The city’s $10 million part of the plan involves nearby streets.
Five ballparks, from South Bend to Evansville, pack ’em in with baseball, promotions.
IMPD officers are not required to live in the city, and about 240, or 16 percent of the force, choose to reside elsewhere. Many of the city’s highest-crime neighborhoods have the fewest police officers as residents.
Indiana physicians and research organizations reaped more than $25 million in payments from 15 pharmaceutical firms in 2012, according to the most recent data made available by the not-for-profit group ProPublica. Lilly was the biggest spender and the IU medical school was the biggest recipient.
Those of us who work in the city but live elsewhere should help pay to keep it strong.
Near the first anniversary of ExactTarget’s $2.5 billion purchase by Salesforce.com, local tech gurus explain how the acquisition lifted all ships by bringing new prestige, investment and expertise to the city.
Leo Brown Group opened two facilities in Indianapolis and Avon in June, and has started construction on two similar projects in Ohio and Kentucky.
The four projects, one of them condominiums, would add nearly 280 units within about a four-block stretch from East Michigan Street north to Massachusetts Avenue.
The economics of the Obamacare’s exchanges are proving attractive to both employers and workers, but a new poll shows that workers still don’t want to end up in them.
Indiana University Health and Aetna Inc. have extended their contract 60 days to try to work out a new deal. The Indianapolis-based hospital system was set to fall out of the provider network of Connecticut-based Aetna on July 1, but the sides agreed to extend their contract until Sept. 1. Aetna has a modest presence in Indiana, claiming about 6 percent of enrollment in all preferred provider networks, according to a recent report by HealthLeaders-InterStudy. Aetna has a strong presence in the Bloomington area, which IU Health serves via the IU Health Bloomington Hospital. In February, IU Health and Minnesota-based UnitedHealthcare agreed to terms after IU Health fell out of UnitedHealthcare’s network of discounts Jan. 1.
Covidien LP will consolidate its U.S. operations for repairing and upgrading medical-device products at its Plainfield facility, hiring up to 112 more workers by the end of 2015. The firm currently employs about 50 in its technical service center at 2824 Airwest Blvd. It will hire new workers and relocate similar operations from Boulder, Colo. The Indiana Economic Development Corp. has offered the company up to $1.12 million in conditional tax credits based on its job-creation plans. The credits are performance-based, meaning the company cannot claim them until it hires workers. In June, Minneapolis-based Medtronic Inc., the second-largest maker of medical devices, agreed to buy Ireland-based parent Covidien Plc for $42.9 billion in cash and stock.
The Pence administration submitted its HIP 2.0 plan to the Obama administration last week, asking to use an altered version of the Healthy Indiana Plan to expand coverage to as many as 350,000 low-income Hoosiers, according to the Associated Press. The U.S. Department of Health & Human Services must approve the proposal before the state can put it into action. In a letter submitting the waiver request, Gov. Mike Pence said the plan offers a “broader set of consumer-driven health care choices.”
