WellPoint Inc. plans to buy lens retailer 1-800-Contacts Inc. in a deal worth an estimated $900 million, giving the insurer its first direct-to-consumer business outside selling individual health coverage.
The Indianapolis-based health insurer said 1-800 Contacts is attractive partly because it has bigger profit margins than its core insurance business, The Wall Street Journal reported.
EMC Precision Machining in Sheridan will give each of its 93 employees a new bicycle Friday for exceeding company cost-cutting goals.
A Cicero-based developer has signed a national senior-living company to operate four new properties it plans for Indiana.
Newly available data from private health insurance plans show that price hikes by hospitals, doctors and drug companies have kept employer spending rising recently even as their employees and dependents have moderated their consumption of health care services.
Bioanalytical Systems Inc.’s new CFO won praise this month for laying out an aggressive cost-cutting plan—but not before the rest of the company’s leaders got a tongue lashing for their past performance.
City-County Councilor Angela Mansfield filed the proposal covering city employees that would make same-sex and heterosexual couples who live together eligible for health insurance benefits.
By the end of 2012, Medical Informatics Engineering anticipates that its six-person Indianapolis workforce will have doubled to 12, then to as many as 25 over the following year or so.
As St. Vincent Health has nearly doubled the number of physicians it employs over the past two years, the losses on those practices have mounted. And the same thing is happening at all the major Indianapolis hospital systems, as all have spent the past four years aggressively acquiring physician practices.
The U.S. Senate voted to let regulators collect on a $6.4 billion fee agreement struck with Indianapolis-based Eli Lilly and Co., Medtronic Inc. and other companies to fund reviews of new drugs and medical devices through 2017.
National Government Services Inc., which processes Medicare and Medicaid claims for the federal government, attributed the job reductions to the loss of a government contract. The subsidiary will still have about 500 workers in Indianapolis.
The merger of Kokomo’s Howard Regional Health System into Indianapolis-based Community Health Network received final approval Tuesday night.
Since its acquisition last year by Florida-based AssuredPartners Inc., the Indiana operations of Neace Lukens has been looking more aggressively to acquire smaller benefits brokers. In the past month, Neace Lukens has announced deals to buy Benefit Concepts, a six-person benefits consultancy in Indianapolis, and Matrix Benefits and Consulting Group, a one-person benefits shop in Fort Wayne. Eric Chelovitz, managing director of Neace Lukens’ 34-person Indianapolis office, said he expects more consolidation in the industry.
Indiana University Health will refund the federal Medicare program $280,000 after an audit of almost 200 claims made by its downtown hospitals found nearly 18 percent of them had been billed improperly.
Most analysts agree with Eli Lilly and Co.’s prediction that, after tough years from 2012 to 2014, the drugmaker will begin growing sales and profits again. But in a new report, BMO Capital Markets predicts Lilly will get stuck at a reduced level of revenue and profit in 2014 and stay there for years.
Johnson & Johnson and Bayer AG’s blood-thinner Xarelto should be approved to help prevent heart attacks and strokes in patients with a common condition, a U.S. regulatory report recommended.
Raising good cholesterol, a goal pursued by Eli Lilly and Co. as the next milestone in cardiac care, may not cut heart-attack risk, says a study that challenges the development of drugs that may someday generate billions of dollars in sales.
Eli Lilly and other big pharmaceutical companies are creating thousands of research jobs overseas as countries led by Singapore, Ireland and South Africa boost incentives.
Indianapolis-based Eli Lilly and Co. and London-based AstraZeneca Plc aren't expected to have an easier time gaining more of the market for blood thinners dominated by Bristol-Myers Squibb Co.’s Plavix after the drug loses U.S. patent protection Thursday.
The proposal, which sought twice-yearly reports on all the health insurer’s donations used for political campaigns or lobbying, was overwhelmingly voted down by WellPoint shareholders.
