CEO of Indianapolis-based health insurer wrote to Obama on Sunday to rebut the president’s criticism that WellPoint seeks
out breast cancer patients to cancel their policies.
City will host the Division I, II or III men’s and women’s swimming and diving championships every year between 2012 and 2017
under a new deal.
The tale shows how a germ of an
idea can turn into something special and how people in business can reach across generations—even when they think their
biggest contributions are behind them—to pull others along.
Basic city
services in Indianapolis are ignored, sold to others or poorly dealt with.
Indianapolis-based Christel House is brokering sales of in-room coffee to resorts around the country, taking a 10-percent
royalty to do so. The coffee is roasted by Indianapolis-based Copper Moon Coffee Co. and packaged in red and green bags decorated
with drawings by students at Christel House’s schools.
The Obama administration has asked state regulators to double-check premium hikes from Indianapolis-based health insurer WellPoint
Inc. after an audit found problems with proposed California increases.
Replacing the existing Wishard Memorial Hospital is so critical to the well-being of the sickly construction sector that one
industry official likens the project to a "lifeline."
The Plainfield Diner is among five endangered structures new to Indiana Landmarks' annual top 10 list released Wednesday.
Clarian will become Indiana University Health early next year in a bet the IU brand carries more punch statewide and nationally.
No can do. Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels was one of 15 who told the federal government they don't want to help create a
temporary high-risk insurance pool. The pools, which would end when the new federal health law creates insurance exchanges
in 2014, would be funded with $5 billion. But Daniels, in a letter to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, said
he fears that money will run out before 2014 and Indiana will have to pick up the bill. Daniels noted that Indiana already
operates its own high-risk insurance pool, in which about 7,000 Hoosiers participate. "In the end this was not a close
call for Indiana," Daniels wrote to the feds. "The risks Indiana is being asked to take are well beyond any range
of acceptability." A report by the Web site Politico.com noted that most Republican governors, like Daniels, have told
the feds to create the exchange on their own while most Democratic governors have said they would help.
Oops. Shares of Indianapolis-based WellPoint Inc. have tumbled 8.4 percent since math errors and other mistakes
forced the company to withdraw its requested rate hake for individual policies in California. That’s the infamous 39-percent
hike (25 percent on average) that President Obama seized on to reignite his push for health reform, which became law on March
23. California insurance regulators, after investigating WellPoint’s rate-hike application, said it was based on flawed
data, according to the Associated Press. WellPoint withdrew the application and said it would try again, perhaps within a
month. But investors didn’t wait. They launched a selloff that dumped WellPoint shares to their lowest level since November.
SonarMed, based in West Lafayette, will receive about $450,000 over two years from the National Institutes
of Health to adapt its airway monitoring system to neonatal patients. SonarMed’s product uses acoustic technology to
catch and prevent movement or obstruction of the tube, both of which can harm patients. Neonatal patients are especially vulnerable,
according to SonarMed, because slight movements of the breathing tube in their small, short tracheas can lead to serious complications.
The technology was developed at Purdue University and licensed to SonarMed by Purdue Research Foundation's Office of Technology
Commercialization.
Researchers at Indiana University School of Medicine have identified a mechanism that causes inflammation
in asthma, excema, and other allergic diseases, which could help drugmakers develop new medicines to control those conditions.
In research reported in the June 2010 issue of the journal Nature Immunology, the IU research team found that a regulatory
factor called PU.1 activates a newly discovered type of T-cell, which appears in higher concentrations in patients with allergic
disease. “Effectively targeting PU.1 to prevent its activation could lead to improved treatments for patients who must
deal with the inflammation caused by these allergic diseases,” said Mark H. Kaplan, professor of pediatrics and of microbiology
and immunology at the IU School of Medicine in Indianapolis. Kaplan recently received a $1.9M grant from the National Institutes
of Health to continue research on this factor.
The Indianapolis-based hospital system, which has 16 hospitals as far afield as LaPorte, Hartford City and Paoli, can
now associate with all its facilities the name of the school that trains the majority of doctors and nurses throughout the
state.
The parent company of Steak n Shake restaurants is angling to acquire a huge stake in the Advance Auto Parts chain.
Sources close to the university said they expect a combination of parking facilities and a multi-use athletics venue and convocation
center to be built on the site.
The highest-profile addition is Jim Coles, a veteran lawyer who will co-lead his new firm’s intellectual property practice.
Anthem Blue Cross withdrew plans to raise health insurance rates for Californians by as much as 39 percent after an independent
audit determined the company’s justification for raising premiums was based on flawed data.
Hotel occupancy rates in the last two years have plunged nationally and locally to levels not seen in decades, putting a number
of hotels at or near the financial breaking point. But relief finally appears to be on the way.
An initiative to bring 10 of the biggest travel tour operators in the United Kingdom to this year’s Indianapolis 500 could
be a first step in bolstering business at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, area golf courses and Indianapolis International
Airport, where city boosters hope to establish direct flights to London.
Three Hoosier universities—Notre Dame, Marian and Indiana—are moving to launch programs that seek to apply MBA-style training to the unique demands of schools.
The $16.5 million worship auditorium that Northview Church in Carmel opened last month may be the last major church-related
project completed in central Indiana for years. Although many projects were finished before the recession, churches, which
usually pay for much of construction in cash, struggled to collect pledges.
