House panel delays vote on gay marriage ban
Chairman Greg Steuerwald delayed the vote Monday following more than three hours of testimony from supporters and opponents.
Chairman Greg Steuerwald delayed the vote Monday following more than three hours of testimony from supporters and opponents.
Eli Lilly and Co.’s success at moving an experimental migraine medicine forward by using outside companies and capital is good news for this reason: The fundamental business of Big Pharma drug development is in bad shape.
Positive results from a Phase 2 trial in patients convinced Indianapolis-based Eli Lilly and Co. to reacquire an experimental migraine medicine, which goes by the name LY2951742. Lilly aims to conduct a Phase 3 trial, the last stage of testing before it can submit the drug for market approval. The drug was licensed from Lilly in 2011 by Massachusetts-based Arteaus Therapeutics, a company formed at the same time by venture capital firms OrbiMed and Atlas Venture. Lilly did not disclose the financial terms of its deal with Arteaus. However, Lilly will record a fourth-quarter charge of $57.1 million to reflect the reacquisition costs and Lilly’s assumption of ongoing development expenses of the drug. The drug is one of nine experimental drugs Lilly has licensed to outside firms as a way to share the risk of research and development costs. Lilly calls the risk-sharing arrangement with venture capital firms its Capital Funds Portfolio. The migraine medicine is the first one Lilly has reacquired from a participating venture-backed company.
Eli Lilly and Co. needs new drugs to patch a larger-than-expected hole in its revenue. On Jan. 7, the Indianapolis-based drugmaker revised its 2014 revenue forecast. Instead of its longstanding prediction of $20 billion in revenue, Lilly now expects to bring in between $19.2 billion and $19.8 billion. Wall Street analysts expected $19.6 billion, according to 17 estimates compiled by Bloomberg News. Revenue is falling at Lilly after its U.S. patents on antidepressant Cymbalta expired in December. Cymbalta generated $4.99 billion in 2012, but analysts expect its sales to plummet to $1.43 billion this year, according to Bloomberg. Also in March, Lilly will lose patent protection on its osteoporosis drug Evista. Analysts expect Evista sales to drop to $498.6 million this year from nearly $1 billion annually before. Lilly expects its 2014 profit to range between $2.77 and $2.85 per share. Analysts anticipated $2.78.
WellPoint Inc. plans to unwind one of the deals Angela Braly made late in her troubled tenure as CEO of the Indianapolis-based health insurer. WellPoint agreed to sell online contact lens retailer 1-800-Contacts to Boston-based private equity firm Thomas H. Lee Partners LP. WellPoint will also sell Glasses.com, a subsidiary of 1-800-Contacts, to Milan-based Luxottica Group SpA. WellPoint’s new CEO, Joe Swedish, said he wants to focus on its core insurance business. “As we prepare for the coming changes to the health-care system, we are focused on our core growth opportunities across both our commercial and government business segments,” Swedish said in the statement. “Proceeds from this transaction will support our continued capital deployment strategies.” WellPoint bought 1-800 Contacts from private equity firm Fenway Partners in June 2012 for about $900 million. The purchase added to investor anger against Braly. She left the company two months later.
The Indiana Family and Social Services Administration announced Friday it will add 3,400 people to the Healthy Indiana Plan, a health insurance program for low-income Hoosiers. That’s the number of Hoosiers who had been among the 50,000 on the program’s waiting list who reapplied and were deemed eligible. But state officials said they expect 20,000 Hoosiers to apply for HIP by the end of this year. The program, which had been running at about 40,000 participants, will have its enrollment capped this year at 45,000. Gov. Mike Pence is negotiating with the Obama administration to use HIP to expand coverage to all Hoosiers with incomes up to 138 percent of the federal poverty limit. For now, HIP participants cannot have incomes above the federal poverty limit, which is $11,490 per adult or $23,550 for a family of four.
Positive results from a Phase 2 trial in patients convinced Lilly to reacquire an experimental migraine medicine. Lilly recorded a charge of $57 million to reflect the purchase price and the costs of further development.
Indiana House Republicans introduced a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage Thursday, along with a supplementary bill meant to address concerns that have led some lawmakers to reassess their votes for the proposal.
The company hopes that employees will accept buyout offers, made to a mix of salaried and manufacturing workers.
In a warning shot to investors, the pharmaceutical giant says it expects “2014 to be the most financially challenging year of Lilly’s current period of patent expirations.”
Ball State University economist Mike Hicks predicted losses in the tens of millions of dollars from the cost of snow removal, the mobilization of extra manpower, and damages to property.
Yolk has signed a lease to occupy 4,410 square feet in the downtown mixed-use development at Delaware and South streets, and is expected to open in the summer.
The university wants to expand its health services program by using some existing Wishard space and tearing down other buildings and replacing them with modern facilities,
Obamacare has officially arrived, but both conservatives and liberals are calling it awful. That means the real debate over health reform is just beginning.
Even though St. Louis-based Ascension Health cut nearly 900 jobs this year from its Indianapolis-based hospital subsidiary, St. Vincent Health, it wants to add 549 more to its service center here by 2016. Ascension, the largest Catholic hospital chain in the nation, opened a service center in Indianapolis in June 2011, and has hired 500 people since then. The service center workers perform human resources, purchasing, bill payment and supply chain management for all of Ascension’s hospitals and hundreds of its other health care facilities. As part of the expansion over the next three years, the service center will provide support services to the entire Ascension chain, which includes 150,000 employees at more than 1,900 locations spread over 24 states and Washington, D.C. St. Vincent cut 865 workers at the end of June. The staff cuts, which represented 5 percent of St. Vincent’s total Indiana employment of 17,300, were brought on by lower-than-expected patient volumes, congressional budget cuts and slower-than-expected growth in reimbursement rates. St. Vincent’s announcement was the first of several by Indiana’s largest hospital systems. In October, Indiana University Health eliminated 935 positions. And in October, Franciscan Alliance cut 925 positions. The Indiana Economic Development Corp. offered Ascension up to $4.8 million in conditional tax credits and up to $200,000 in training grants, if Ascension adds all 549 jobs it has promised.
Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield, along with most other major insurers, will allow consumers who enroll in health plans through the new Obamacare exchanges 10 extra days to pay their first premiums and still gain coverage effective Jan. 1. That means consumers can wait to make their first payment until as late as Jan. 10. According to Bloomberg News, the Obama administration had asked insurers on Dec. 12 to give customers more time to pay and grant retroactive coverage. A few days of retroactive coverage is common in the health insurance industry. Anthem’s parent company, Indianapolis-based WellPoint Inc., will also let current members buy a new plan in the off-exchange individual market as late as Jan. 10 and still be covered retroactive to the first of the year. Many WellPoint and Anthem customers whose individual policies were canceled because the policies did not comply with Obamacare’s new rules, were automatically enrolled in a similar Obamacare-compliant plan off of the exchange. But now Anthem is allowing such customers to choose a different plan by the 10th of each month in either January, February or March.
Eli Lilly and Co., Pfizer Inc. and other large drugmakers will keep paying doctors to give talks about their products, leaving GlaxoSmithKline Plc alone for now in its decision to halt such compensation. According to Bloomberg News, United Kingdom-based Glaxo changed its policy after Chinese authorities accused the company of using cash and sexual favors to bribe doctors and health officials to promote product sales. But Lilly and other drugmakers say physicians are still in most cases the best source of information for their colleagues. “Few products in the world are as complex as an innovative medicine,” said Scott MacGregor, a spokesman for Indianapolis-based Lilly. He added that Glaxo’s move won’t change how Lilly does business. New York-based Pfizer, the world’s biggest drugmaker, is “committed to fairly compensating health-care professionals, clinical investigators and institutions for the work they do,” Dean Mastrojohn, a spokesman for the company, told Bloomberg.
Fifth Third’s local president, Nancy Huber, said the bank is awarding $60,000 to Junior Achievement to create a student bank.
Eli Lilly and Co., Pfizer Inc., Sanofi and other large drugmakers will keep paying doctors to give talks about their products, leaving GlaxoSmithKline Plc alone for now in its decision to halt such compensation.
John Lechleiter, Angela Braly and two other local business leaders have pledged a combined $3 million to United Way of Central Indiana over the next four years. United Way is trying to raise $42.5 million by the end of the year.
Fifteen years after Pfizer Inc.’s Viagra changed the sexual equation for older men, the blockbuster impotence drug is set to become available in a less expensive generic form as early as 2017.
Tom Fischer, chief financial and chief operating officer of Community Health Network, departed suddenly this month. Sources with knowledge of the situation described Fischer’s exit as a firing. But a Community spokeswoman said Fischer resigned in a private meeting with Community CEO Bryan Mills. Fischer, 60, who joined Community as CFO in 2005, declined to comment. Mills and Fischer have been close friends for decades, dating to the time they both worked for the Ernst & Young accounting firm. Now Holly Millard, Community’s chief accounting officer, is serving as interim CFO while Community searches for a replacement. Community is trying to cut expenses 15 percent to 20 percent, including via staff reductions. Community laid off more than 150 employees during the first nine months of this year, many of them part of what it described as a systemwide realignment. Community spokeswoman Lynda de Widt described the staff reductions as part of the normal course of business in an organization that has 13,000 employees. Community reported in late November that it had spent $5 million this year on severance costs.
Because Indianapolis-area hospitals have let go a wave of workers this year, the University of Indianapolis will host a seminar to help nurses and health care professionals search for new jobs. The seminar, “Reinventing Yourself: A Personal Transformation for Healthcare Workers” is scheduled from 8:30 to 11:30 a.m. Jan. 11 in UIndy’s Schwitzer Student Center at 1400 E. Hanna Ave. The free event is sponsored by UIndy’s School for Adult Learning, School of Nursing and College of Health Sciences, and will tout UIndy’s health-related educational programs. Also, John Vice, a longtime human resources manager for Eli Lilly and Co., will tell attendees how to pursue new career paths.
Nearly 2,800 Hoosiers selected a private insurance plan on the Obamacare exchange in November, nearly four times as many as did so in October. The faster pace of enrollment was mirrored in the other 35 states that are also relying on the federally run Healthcare.gov web site for online enrollment. The Obama administration worked feverishly in November to correct major technical problems with the website that prevented numerous Americans from enrolling. Even so, the pace of enrollment in the federal exchange will need to be nearly 12 times faster than it was in November if enrollment via the exchange is going to meet a federal projection of more than 4.8 million enrollees by the end of March. According to a report issued Wednesday by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 137,204 actually selected a private health insurance plan during October and November, with about 110,000 of them doing so in November. In 14 states and the District of Columbia, which are operating their own insurance exchanges, enrollment also surged in November, to nearly 148,000 people, compared with about 80,000 in October. Enrollment via the state-based exchanges will need to triple its pace to meet an overall federal projection of 7 million enrollees via the Obamacare exchanges.
More than 10,000 low-income Indiana residents who participate in the Healthy Indiana Plan will be able to keep their benefits through April. The Indiana Family and Social Services Administration announced Dec. 10 it is extending for an extra three months its Healthy Indiana Plan to participants who earn between 100 percent and 200 percent of the federal poverty level. The move will give members more time to obtain coverage through the federal health care exchange. FSSA Secretary Debra Minott said many HIP members have struggled to enroll in the exchange because of technical issues. The HIP extension could cost Indiana up to $11 million.
Since 1998, there have been more than 100 attempts to develop an Alzheimer’s treatment, and all have failed. Such a product may generate as much as $5 billion annually for Merck, according to analysts
Cymbalta is Eli Lilly and Co. Inc.'s best-selling drug and posted 2012 sales of $4.7 billion, making it the fifth-highest selling medication in the world. The drug's patent expired Wednesday.