DANIELS: The children won big in this year’s General Assembly
Something extraordinary happened in this year’s legislative session. But it might not be what you think.
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Articles
BECK: Committee might dent the sexual assault epidemic
I hope you will join me in observing Sexual Assault Awareness Month, which is marked each April across our country.
SHEPARD: Protect working class with better panhandling ordinance
A recent settlement between the city of Indianapolis and the Indiana ACLU over enforcement of the present ordinance about panhandling has put the question of writing a new ordinance back on the table.
TRY THIS: Feel the wind beneath your feet at Sky Zone
My quest for a fun fitness activity led me to indoor trampoline park Sky Zone for its Skyrobics exercise class, conducted on trampolines, and learned a valuable lesson while catching air.
Beck’s Hybrids prospers against far bigger firms
When Lawrence and Francis Beck planted six acres of hybrid corn on their Hamilton County farm almost eight decades ago, the father and son sowed the seeds of a family business that’s still growing despite widespread industry consolidation.
HENDERSON: Why we should halt tax abatements
It’s time to rein in the tax abaters. If the business plan succeeds only if you can avoid or abate taxes, then it’s a bad plan.
Indiana’s 10 (or more) most profitable health insurers
WellPoint’s commanding market share gave it a whopping $129 million in profit from its risk-based insurance products in 2012. But in percentage terms, WellPoint was not at the top of the heap.
KENNEDY: First, eat the spinach
There is probably not a parent on the planet who hasn’t delivered the time-honored dinner lecture, “No dessert unless you eat your vegetables.” We want our children to understand that first things come first—that consuming healthy food has to come before sugary treats, no matter how tempting.
Local businesses struggle to make sense of Heartbleed flaw
Companies around Indianapolis—especially small ones without their own IT teams—are still trying to determine how or even if they were affected by the confounding Internet security gap.
Company news
Assembly Pharmaceuticals, a company with roots in Bloomington and San Francisco, has attracted an undisclosed amount of investment from New Jersey-based Johnson & Johnson Development Corp., Indianapolis-based Twilight Ventures, Zionsville-based Luson Bioventures, BioCrossroads Indiana Seed Fund II and private investors. Assembly is developing drugs that could cure chronic hepatitis B virus, or HBV, infection. Chronic HBV affects an estimated 350 million people worldwide, causing cirrhosis and liver failure and in some cases liver cancer. More than 600,000 deaths each year are attributable to HBV, which can be suppressed with lifelong therapy but which has no known cure. Assembly was formed in 2012 by Indiana University professor Adam Zlotnick and Dr. Uri Lopatin, who led HBV programs at Gilead Sciences and Roche Pharmaceuticals. Assembly has licensed intellectual property from the IU Research and Technology Corp. that was discovered in Zlotnick’s laboratory. Other co-founders of the company include IU chemistry professor Richard DiMarchi; Derek Small, president of Luson Bioventures; and William Turner, a former medicinal chemist at Lilly Research Laboratories.
Carmel-based nursing home developer Mainstreet Property Group LLC promised investors returns of 14 percent to 18 percent for investments in nursing homes it is now building around Indiana, according to a private document obtained by the Associated Press. Under its business model, Mainstreet arranges financing for its facilities, then leases the completed buildings to a private operator. The buildings are then sold to HealthLease Properties Inc., a real estate investment trust controlled by Zeke Turner, who is also CEO of Mainstreet. According to the document, Mainstreet was looking to raise $60 million to build 12 new nursing homes at a cost of $199 million combined. In the case of three nursing homes it planned, Mainstreet expected to sell each for roughly $20 million, collecting between $3.3 million and $5.3 million on each sale, which would represent profits of 16.5 percent to 26.5 percent. The document does not include expected sale prices for the other nine facilities. Some previous facilities appeared to have generated even larger profits. In the case of Wellbrooke of Westfield, a new health care facility Mainstreet completed last year, investors put in $750,000 and made a $4.5 million profit, according to the Associated Press. For eight nursing home sales to HealthLease detailed in the Mainstreet document, Mainstreet investors made $34 million on an investment of $14 million, for a $20 million profit.
Indiana University's trustees have selected a downtown Evansville site for a nearly $70 million health education and research center planned by IU's medical school and three other schools. The board of trustees approved the location Friday following a recommendation by IU President Michael McRobbie. The University of Evansville, the University of Southern Indiana and Ivy Tech Community College also plan to offer programs at the center that could draw some 2,000 health care students.
Indianapolis-based WellPoint Inc. has donated nearly $12.8 million to help defeat a ballot initiative that would give California regulators power to reject increases in health policy premiums, according to Bloomberg News, citing data provided by the California-based research organization MapLight. Premiums for family medical coverage in California have increased 185 percent since 2002, with average monthly premiums for single coverage at $572 in 2013, compared with $490 nationally, according to a report released in January by California HealthCare Foundation, an Oakland-based not-for-profit. The ballot initiative would require insurers to disclose publicly and justify proposed rate changes that affect individual and small employer customers. It would also give the state insurance commissioner authority to reject increases. About 35 states, including Indiana, have authority to approve or deny rate changes, according to the National Association of Insurance Commissioners.
Eli Lilly and Co. saw little effect on its stock price after a jury in a federal court in Louisiana ordered Lilly to pay $3 billion in damages to patients who took the diabetes medicine Actos. That decision had no practical impact on Lilly because the maker of Actos, Japan-based Takeda Pharmaceutical Co., had agreed to indemnify Lilly against any legal damages. Lilly sold Actos for Takeda in the United States from 1999 until 2006. The jury ordered Actos to pay $6 billion in damages after finding that the drug companies hid the cancer risks of Actos. Takeda and Lilly said they would appeal the judgment. Even without a successful appeal, legal experts told Bloomberg News the $9 billion in damages is likely to be reduced because it is out of proportion to the documented damages in the case.
Ohio-based ViaQuest Inc. has acquired the Indiana operations of TriStar Home Health and Hospice, a division of Louisville-based Trilogy Health Services. The acquisition includes seven home health care branches in Evansville, Fowler, Huntingburg, Lafayette and Muncie, and two in Terre Haute. The locations operate under one of three brand names: Vibrant Home Health Care, Care One Homecare Services and Serenity Hospice. The locations employ a total of 180 people. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Feds sue Indianapolis man over fictional credit union
An arrest warrant has been issued for Tim Coughlin, who has been accused of running a Ponzi scheme that collected $12.8 million from investors. In 2008, he proposed creating a 20-story balloon ride at White River State Park.
Tech startup Gusto lands $1.3M in venture capital
Elevate Ventures, which manages the federally backed Indiana Angel Network Fund, led the financing round.
IU research-to-market center plans move to Wishard
The Indiana University Research and Technology Corp. wants to sell its existing Innovation Center building in downtown Indianapolis and move into the former Wishard Memorial Hospital on the edge of the IUPUI campus.
LOU’S VIEWS: Pulpit fiction
Three spring theater productions address the ecclesiastical. Thoughts on “The Mountaintop,” “The Christians,” and “Anything Goes.”
Trailer parks lure ex-traders eyeing double-wide returns
Former hedge-fund executives who left Wall Street are finding new ways to milk profits from old trailer parks, including one in Indianapolis.
Roundup: Scotty’s Brewhouse openings, Mo’s returning and more
The locally based chain is opening restaurants to the west and north of Indianapolis, within a week’s time, while Mo’s is returning downtown in a restaurant rebranding.
Lilly shares hit all-time high for the John Lechleiter era
Court win last week in a patent challenge to lung cancer drug Alimta pushed Lilly shares higher than they’ve ever been since April 2007. Since then, the company’s pipeline has produced more misfires than the villains in a James Bond movie
Indy-based Web firm for coaches makes Atlanta acquisition
Startup dot-com BookIt Commerce Inc. is in the midst of expanding its site for vetting and marketing coaches into new markets.
Company news
If Indiana hospitals want an expansion of insurance coverage for low-income Hoosiers, Gov. Mike Pence thinks they should contribute toward the hundreds of millions of dollars it would cost. The Pence administration has started discussions with hospital leaders to use an existing program known as the Hospital Assessment Fee to generate money to help the state cover costs it would incur under an expansion of health coverage to as many as 400,000 Hoosiers. That expansion, called for by President Obama’s Affordable Care Act, did not happen in Indiana this year, as it did in 26 other states, in large part due to Pence’s concerns about the fiscal impact on the state. The health insurance expansion would be paid for entirely by the federal government in 2015 and 2016, but then require state contributions that could rise to $393 million per year by 2020, according to estimates by the actuarial firm Milliman Inc. Other elements of Obamacare are estimated to cost state government $123 million per year by 2020. The Hospital Assessment Fee effectively taxes hospitals to provide the state government with the funds needed to raise its reimbursement rates for Medicaid patients. When the state does that, the federal government increases its 2-for-1 matching funds to support the Indiana Medicaid program. Hospitals end up getting twice as much in new revenue as they pay out in assessments. Doug Leonard, president of the Indiana Hospital Association, said hospitals are open to Pence’s approach, but are waiting until the idea is fleshed out and numbers are attached.
Indiana University Health was chosen by a Wisconsin hospital system to provide heart and aorta surgeries there after surgeons the hospital system had been using were employed by a competing provider. Wisconsin-based ProHealth Care will pay the salaries of the three IU Health surgeons who will work in ProHealth’s Waukesha Memorial Hospital, which is midway between Milwaukee and Madison. ProHealth performs more than 400 cardiothoracic surgeries each year. IU Health performs more than 1,900 cardiothoracic surgeries at its 19 hospitals in Indiana. “The goal for the two health systems is to collaborate to establish and oversee a premier surgery program in Waukesha that will incorporate the clinical protocols, care pathways and quality metrics that have been the foundation of IU Health’s nationally ranked cardiovascular program,” IU Health spokesman Gene Ford said in an email. IU Health said it would evaluate similar opportunities, but stopped short of saying it is making out-of-state partnerships a business strategy.
Eli Lilly and Co. is in a three-way race to introduce a new kind of breast cancer drug, which at least one analyst thinks could become a $6 billion-a-year blockbuster. According to Bloomberg News, Indianapolis-based Lilly, New York-based Pfizer Inc. and Switzerland-based Novartis AG all presented data on Sunday about experimental drugs that stopped growth of breast cancer tumors. Pfizer’s drug, palbociclib, stopped tumor growth for 20.2 months in advanced forms of hormone-related breast cancer, twice the time seen with an older therapy by itself. Lilly’s bemaciclib stopped tumor growth for an average of 9.1 months. Doctors told Bloomberg that the new class of drugs, called CDK inhibitors, offers the first major new therapy in a decade for patients whose breast cancer fails to respond to other treatments. Mark Schoenebaum, an ISI Group analyst in New York, predicted Pfizer’s drug could generate peak sales of $6 billion a year.
Indiana Attorney General Greg Zoeller filed Medicaid fraud charges April 2 against Sally Metzner, 57, owner of Anderson Dental Center, and eight of her employees. According to the Associated Press, the charges allege Metzner and her employees started a scheme in 2006 to submit false and inflated claims for payment of dental services to the Indiana Medicaid program, sometimes using forged documents, to receive more than $300,000 in ineligible Medicaid payments. The allegedly fraudulent billing continued even after state, federal and local authorities executed the first of three search warrants at the clinic, the attorney general's office said. For example, instead of billing Medicaid $30 for the routine use of the anesthesia nitrous oxide, the practice allegedly billed it as a $125 intravenous procedure known as "deep sedation.”
Lessons learned in the northern ‘burbs
IBJ’s experiment with place-based business news couldn’t have come at a better time—just as the fast-growing communities north of 96th Street began to emerge from the depths of the recession and look to the future.