Already a wreck, the worst is yet to come with Obamacare
Obamacare is destined to fail for one key reason: it will make health insurance cost more and buy less.
Obamacare is destined to fail for one key reason: it will make health insurance cost more and buy less.
Online “food hubs” have emerged as small and medium-sized farmers have worked together to find quicker and broader ways to distribute their produce.
Plunging revenue from blood glucose monitors has forced Roche Diagnostics Corp. to cut its staff, the company informed the workers last week. Roche, which operates its North American headquarters out of Indianapolis, suffered a 14-percent decline in revenue in its diabetes care unit during the first six months of the year. Roche has put that unit up for sale, according to a May report by the Reuters news agency. Roche spokesman Todd Siesky declined to disclose the number of workers that will be let go, only saying that jobs will be eliminated over the next several months. The cuts will affect Roche’s customer service group in Fishers and its diabetes manufacturing plant on the far northeast side. Between the two sites, Roche employs more than 900 diabetes care workers in the metro area. During the first six months of this year, Roche’s North American sales of diabetes products totaled $224 million. During the same period of 2012, diabetes sales in North American totaled about $257 million. And it’s going to get worse. The price of blood glucose monitors—which account for 90 percent of Roche’s diabetes care revenue—will be hammered by a new competitive bidding process instituted July 1 by the federal Medicare agency. Some projections indicated the Medicare program would drive down its payments 72 percent.
Indianapolis venture capitalist Matt Neff is the new CEO of Indianapolis-based AIT Laboratories, the drug-testing lab founded by Michael Evans. Evans stepped aside once before, in early 2012, and was replaced by Ron Thieme, who had been vice president of information technology. But the move didn’t work out, and Evans returned to the top job that fall. Now, Evans, 69, is stepping aside again, and Neff is becoming chairman, president and CEO, effective Monday. (See related story above.) Evans will remain chairman emeritus and continue as CEO of AIT sister company AIT Bioscience. Neff, meanwhile, is stepping down as CEO and president of CHV Capital, the venture capital arm of Indiana University Health, a post he held for six years. IU Health said the CHV Capital board would conduct a search for his replacement. AIT, founded in 1990 by Evans, then an Indiana University School of Medicine professor, caught fire about 10 years ago when it became the nation’s pioneer in urine drug tests to help doctors monitor patients taking narcotics for chronic pain. But AIT has been in turnaround mode after failing to respond quickly to deep cuts in Medicare reimbursement rates for basic drug tests. In 2009, Evans sold the company to employees for $90 million, with payments to him staggered over a number of years.
Community Health Network and Johnson Memorial Health opened the doors to a new health pavilion that will house doctors from both Community Physician Network and Johnson Memorial Physician Network, including specialists in family medicine, pediatrics, orthopedics, women’s health and general surgery. The facility will also offer walk-in lab testing, an imaging center, and physical and occupational therapy. Indianapolis-based Community and Franklin-based Johnson Memorial formed a partnership two years ago.
The primary investors in Allison Transmission Holdings Inc. are looking to lock in profits by unloading 16.6 million shares of the company for more than $350 million.
By and large, Obamacare will leave in place the same major problems in the health care systems that existed before the law was passed—in both Indiana and across the nation.
States are viewed as having wide latitude to regulate alcohol sales.
Founding principal of 29-year-old Borshoff advertising agency, Myra Borshoff Cook, 65, and senior principal Erik Johnson, 62, have sold their ownership interest in recent years to three top executives at the firm, all of them women.
Flaherty & Collins Properties is floating two redevelopment ideas for a seven-acre parcel on the edge of Carmel’s tony downtown, but both require public support that casts uncertainty over the project.
Maarten Bout is the new executive director for IndyBaroque, which oversees the Indianapolis Baroque Orchestra and Ensemble Voltaire.
Sports won’t solve all of the city’s problems, but sports can help on many fronts.
If assigned comparison-and-contrast lessons between Zinn’s history and other texts, students might enter college better able to question, discern, reason, shape opinions, defend those opinions and compromise.
The Indianapolis software developer last quarter broke its sales teams into tiers—small, medium and large deals—because too many employees were going after big contracts, with their high commissions.
An emerging network of angel investors from around the state will team with Indiana University next month on a workshop that will put them in the same room with entrepreneurs who’d like their backing.
Starting with this post, I’m going to periodically give you a peek at my reading list. I’ll highlight reports and reportage that I have found either helpful or provocative. I hope you do, too.
Kevin Costner at the Indiana State Fair? The Contours at Conner Prairie? What did you hear, see or do on the A&E front this weekend?
Indiana University wants to reach more students and create a major source of revenue at a time when existing ones are struggling, school officials say.
Dr. Aisha Hashmat, a family medicine physician, has joined Community Physician Network in Anderson. She previously ran a family medicine practice on the south side of Indianapolis. Hashmat received her medical degree from Khyber Medical College at the University of Peshawar in Pakistan.
Dr. Daniel Kim, a neurosurgeon, has joined Community Physician Network, treating patients in Indianapolis and Anderson. Kim, a former attorney at the Indianapolis law firm Ice Miller LLP, received his medical degree from the Indiana Unviersity School of Medicine.
Steven Jones has been promoted to vice president of human resources for the Indiana University Health hospital system. An IU Health veteran for the past decade, Jones most recently served as executive director of talent management and diversity. Jones has a bachelor’s in economics from Wabash College.
Dr. Barbara Sturm, a dermatologist, has joined Franciscan Physician Network. She previously operated an independent practice, Dermatology of Stones Crossing, which was affiliated with Franciscan St. Francis Health. Sturm has a bachelor’s in biochemistry from Purdue University and a medical degree from the Indiana University School of Medicine.
Indy Eleven, the city’s new professional soccer franchise, has been on a season ticket sales tear since the International Champions Cup game was announced—and that sales push continues. Team officials now shooting for new goal by Nov. 11.
Indianapolis-based Eli Lilly and Co., already the promoter of the leading anti-impotence pill Cialis, will now try to speed up development of a drug to treat premature ejaculation. Canada-based TVM Life Sciences Ventures VII, which manages funds supplied by Lilly, invested in Ixchelsis Ltd., a new company created in the United Kingdom to develop the experimental drug, which is called IX-01. The drug was originally discovered at a research facility in the United Kingdom operated by New York-based Pfizer Inc., the company that brought the anti-impotence pill Viagra to market. Lilly’s Chorus unit will oversee development of the drug to determine if its proposed concept of action appears to work. “TVM’s strategic relationship with Lilly enables its project-focused companies, like Ixchelsis, to reach clinical proof of concept efficiently and cost-effectively,” said Darren Carroll, Lilly’s vice president of corporate business development, in a prepared statement. If and when the drug’s proof-of-concept is verified, Lilly will have the option to acquire the drug for further development. Lilly and TVM estimate that as many as 30 percent of men worldwide suffer from premature ejaculation.
Warsaw-based Zimmer Holdings Inc., which lost a February trial against Stryker Corp. over a surgical device, was told to pay more than $228 million—three times the jury award plus other costs—and stop selling certain products. According to Bloomberg News, the increase in the jury award was appropriate because Zimmer intentionally infringed Stryker patents to build its business for pulsed lavage, a technique that removes damaged tissue and cleans bones during joint-replacement surgery, U.S. District Judge Robert Jonker said in an order issued Wednesday. He also ordered Zimmer to stop selling its Pulsavac Plus device. A federal jury in Grand Rapids, Mich., in February sided with Stryker and awarded $70 million in damages. The dispute is over devices that use pulsing liquid, such as water or saline solution, to loosen debris from a surgical site and remove it by suction. The $228 million figure is more than the second-quarter profit for either company. Kalamazoo, Mich.-based Stryker reported $213 million in earnings on sales of $2.2 billion. Zimmer, based in Warsaw, reported $152 million in earnings on $1.2 billion in sales.
Three months after the recall of its Zilver PTX stent to prop open peripheral arteries, Bloomington-based Cook Medical Inc. put the device back on the market around the globe, according to MassDevice.com, an industry trade publication. Cook voluntarily recalled the stents in April after getting reports of one patient death and one injury when the equipment that delivers the stent into patients broke off during surgery. In late May, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration slapped its “deadly” warning on Cook’s recall of its stent, which props open arteries in the legs and arms to prevent serious blood clots. Millenium Research Group has estimated that Cook derives $2,750 from each Zilver stent it sells in the United States. Since it first hit foreign markets in 2009, the Zilver stent has been deployed in more than 30,000 patients, according to data from Cook. The Zilver, which is the first stent covered with an inflammation-reducing drug, was introduced to the U.S. market in December 2012. The Zilver recall did not affect stents that were already placed in patients.
Symbios Medical Products LLC filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy liquidation, costing numerous Indianapolis-area angel investors large sums.