Lawmakers Young and Donnelly push restoration of 40-hour definition of full-time, but critics say their bills would gut Obamacare’s employer mandate and lead to a decline in employer insurance coverage.
Fritz French and Richard DiMarchi have raised $1.7 million from venture capitalists to launch Calibrium LLC, a biotech company that will develop diabetes drugs. French and DiMarchi were leaders of Marcadia Biotech Inc., which developed diabetes drugs based on DiMarchi's research as a chemistry professor at Indiana University. They sold the company for $287 million to Switzerland-based Roche in late 2010. In November, Calibrium struck a deal with Indiana University to fund 10 researchers in DiMarchi’s chemistry lab in Bloomington. Then in December, Calibrium secured convertible debt investments from two of the venture capital firms that backed Marcadia—San Francisco-based 5AM Ventures and Seattle-based Frazier Healthcare. Calibrium has hired Kristin Sherman as its chief financial officer; she held the same position at Marcadia. French said he expects more members of the Marcadia team to join Calibrium as its work advances.
Nearly two-thirds of the state’s nursing homes are now participating in partnerships with county-owned hospitals that effectively double their profit margins. The partnerships allow both hospitals and nursing homes to draw down extra federal money, which appears to give nursing homes at least 2 percent on top of their average profit margin of 2 percent. According to data from the Indiana State Department of Health, 329 nursing homes have sold their licenses to county-owned hospitals—63 percent of all nursing homes in the state and nearly 70 percent of those that offer beds to Medicaid patients. The partnerships with county-owned hospitals trigger larger payments from the federal agency that oversees the Medicare and Medicaid programs. Those payments average $71.54 per day for each Medicaid patient, according to analysis of Indiana data by the accounting firm Myers and Stauffer LC. It is unclear exactly how the hositals and nursing homes split that money, which totaled $313 million statewide last year. But Indiana Health Care Association officials said hospitals are paying nursing homes management fees that net out to about 2 percent of the nursing homes’ net patient revenue.
Hall Render Killian Heath & Lyman, the nation's largest health-care-focused law firm, ranked eighth on The Hill newspaper's 2013 top 10 list of Washington, D.C., lobbying firms based on the number of new client registrations. Last year, Indianapolis-based Hall Render registered 28 new clients. The firm created its federal legislative and regulatory advisory practice in 2012. The practice includes attorneys John Williams and John Render, as well as Andrew Coats, the son of Indiana Sen. Dan Coats.
If one of the overt Democratic lines of attack against Republicans is that Republicans are conducting a war on women, one of the low-simmering, implicit lines of attack from Republicans is that Democrats are conducting a war on men, or at least traditional views of masculinity.
Recent debates in the General Assembly about inspecting apartments for safety and sanitation purposes has highlighted the need for more energetic collaboration between state government and the people who lead cities and towns.
A few weeks ago, I received an email from a conservative special-interest group. It opened with four paragraphs about a Statehouse issue along with a list of House members the group wanted its supporters to call and email. But that’s not what caught my eye.
There is a lot of talk these days about income inequality—the growing gap between the incomes of the rich and poor. Arthur Brooks, president of the American Enterprise Institute, acknowledged in a recent speech to our Economic Club that the ”recovery” is working only for the rich: The poor are seeing no benefit from it, and income inequality is growing.
Sometimes it seems our political leaders know only four-letter words like jobs. They often precede this with another four letter word: good.
I commend the governor for recognizing the state’s long overdue need to expand access to quality early-childhood education. In my years as a teacher, I found the difference between students arriving with a preschool education and those without to be profound.
Gov. Mike Pence has proposed eliminating property taxes on business machinery and equipment. How exactly that is to be done, and over what time frame, he has left to the wisdom of the General Assembly.
Gregg W. Throgmartin is stepping down, a move that will leave the retailer without executive leadership from a member of its founding family for the first time since the first store opened in 1955.
Carmel-based Mainstreet Property Group will open 24 more health care facilities for Hoosier seniors during this year and the next two years. Those facilities, in total, would create 3,000 permanent jobs for Hoosiers–if they’re allowed to be built. The Indiana General Assembly is mulling a five-year moratorium on the construction of skilled nursing facilities, which if passed would prevent Mainstreet from building any new facilities not already begun by June 30. That legislation, known as Senate Bill 173, has passed the Indiana Senate and now awaits a hearing in the Indiana House. Zeke Turner, CEO of Mainstreet, said that if Indiana enacts a construction moratorium, Mainstreet will simply build more facilities in other states. The company has existing facilities in eight states and is working to expand in six more. Mainstreet alarmed older nursing home companies by developing 10 new facilities in the past five years—and breaking an unwritten rule of the industry by building in competitors’ back yards. That prompted the Indiana Health Care Association and other long-term-care groups to call for a ban on new construction.
Purdue Research Foundation and Bloomington-based medical-device maker Cook Medical have created a $12 million fund intended to help life-science businesses with connections to Purdue University. The Foundry Investment Fund will try to work with other investors to provide funding for companies that use Purdue-licensed technology or Purdue’s expertise in human and animal health and plant sciences. It typically would provide a match to outside investors’ funds. Outside investors could include venture capital firms, corporations, angel funding groups, or qualified individuals.
Indiana University Health announced a deal with UnitedHealthcare on Feb. 6, ending a contract dispute that had pushed IU Health doctors and hospitals out of the health insurance company’s discounted network Jan. 1. The two-year agreement gives UnitedHealthcare discounted rates retroactive to Jan. 1. Such discounts, which insurers negotiate with hospital systems, reduce prices 30 percent or more. The dispute between Indianapolis-based IU Health and Minnesota-based UnitedHealthcare dates to 2012, when the sides could not agree on a new long-term contract. They instead extended their previous agreement by one year, to Dec. 31, 2013, but then could not come to terms before the end of the year.
Abbott Laboratories and AbbVie Inc., the company it spun off last year, hid the dangers of using the testosterone replacement drug AndroGel, five men claim in lawsuits.
This year will be ugly for Eli Lilly and Co., after the recent loss of two blockbusters, but it also gives Lilly an opportunity it hasn’t really had for nearly a decade: grow sales and profit by launching new drugs.
A new study of 10 cities, including Indianapolis, gives a picture of how big hospitals have been battling with big health insurers over prices—and winning.
Once the work is finished in about nine months, the Canterbury, which will be rebranded as a Le Meridien, should be able to better compete with other upscale downtown hotels, a consultant said.
Plenty of examples, both at home and abroad, show the world is still an unfriendly place.
Since WellPoint says it’s not losing money on the exchanges—at this point—that’s encouraging news for those who would like the Obamacare exchanges to remain a viable option.
Willow Marketing hires eight people following a brutal period of downsizing for most agencies, nearly doubling its staff.
Sarah Urist Green, 34, left a job with the Indianapolis Museum of Art to launch, with her husband—and fellow Forty Under 40 honoree John Green—the interactive PBS online program “The Art Assignment,” debuting Feb. 20.
The Denver Post has snagged Jon Murray, who will join the ranks of more than a dozen Indianapolis Star newsroom staffers to depart in the last year.
