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| Anthem, Inc. News |
| Indiana Companies Among ‘World’s Most Ethical’ |
| 2/12/2018 Inside Indiana Business with Gerry Dick – WTHR-TV |
| Brown, Alex |
| Five Indiana-based companies are included among the "World’s Most Ethical Companies." The companies on the list, compiled by the New York-based Ethisphere Institute, were selected based on criteria including ethics and compliance programs, corporate citizenship and responsibility, and governance. Indianapolis-based Anthem joins the list for the first time since its inception in 2007. |
| Insurers Signal Medicare Advantage Buyouts Ahead |
| 2/12/2018 Forbes Online |
| Japsen, Bruce |
| Anthem, Humana and WellCare Health Plans are signaling plans to aggressively grow their Medicare Advantage businesses with the help of mergers and acquisitions. |
| Competitor and Industry News |
| Judge allows UnitedHealth Medicare fraud case to proceed |
| 2/12/2018 Star Tribune Online |
| Snowbeck, Christopher |
| A whistleblower case alleging that Minnetonka-based UnitedHealth Group defrauded the federal Medicare program can move forward, a federal judge ruled Monday, although the decision narrowed the set of claims that the government might pursue. |
| Kindred shareholder sues to halt $4.1B deal with Humana, two equity firms: 5 things to know |
| 2/12/2018 Becker’s Hospital Review Online |
| Haefner, Morgan |
| A shareholder of Louisville, Ky.-based Kindred Healthcare filed a lawsuit to stop a proposed deal between Kindred, Humana and two equity firms, WDRB reports. |
| Health insurer loses $73 million after Trump halts ACA subsidies |
| 2/12/2018 Axios |
| Herman, Bob |
| Molina Healthcare said Monday that President Trump’s decision to end the Affordable Care Act’s cost-sharing subsidies for low-income people cost the company $73 million in the final three months of 2017. Molina has since curtailed its participation in the ACA marketplaces for 2018. |
| Walgreens Has Made Takeover Approach to AmerisourceBergen |
| 2/12/2018 The Wall Street Journal Online |
| Japsen, Bruce |
| Wallgreens has made a move to takeover drug distributor AmerisourceBergen. |
| Prescription Opioids Increase Risk for Serious Infections |
| 2/12/2018 Medscape |
| Kuehn, Bridget |
| Opioid medications, particularly long-acting or high-dose opioids, may increase the risk for serious infections, including invasive pneumonia, meningitis, and bacteremia, according to a study published online February 13 in the Annals of Internal Medicine. |
| Could a rare, deadly ‘superbug’ fungus be gaining a foothold? |
| 2/12/2018 FierceHealthcare |
| Thill, David |
| The number of U.S. patients infected with a rare but dangerous fungal “superbug” called Candida auris has climbed quickly to 200 as of Dec. 31, according to the latest figures from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. CDC first alerted American healthcare facilities that year to be on the lookout for the fungus, which can cause serious medical complications when it enters the bloodstream, usually through wounds, ventilators or catheters. |
| This start-up founder suffers chronic pain — now she’s on a mission to figure out how to measure it |
| 2/12/2018 CNBC Online |
| Farr, Christina |
| Silicon Valley entrepreneur Christine Lemke has a rare genetic disease that causes inflammation of the joints and the spine, leaving her with frequent back pain. Evidation’s thesis is that there’s a lot to learn about people’s experience of disease through their digital footprint. But to do that, they need to generate evidence through clinical studies of their own. |
| A Long Era of Low Health Care Inflation May Be Coming to End |
| 2/12/2018 Bloomberg News |
| Tozzi, John |
| Since the late 2000s Great Recession, historically low increases in health-care prices have helped hold down inflation. That may be about to change. Hospital prices increased 2.2 percent in December, the fastest rate in four years, according to an analysis by Altarum, a nonprofit health-care research organization. The group analyzes data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and other sources to estimate the underlying prices that health plans and consumers pay for medical goods and services. |
| Healthcare startups are flush with cash, but investors are starting to worry |
| 2/12/2018 Modern Healthcare Online |
| LaMantia, Jonathan |
| New York healthcare companies continued to attract hundreds of millions in venture-capital funding last year, but some private investors said they are growing more concerned that the investments aren’t resulting in either mergers and acquisitions or initial public offerings. |
| He Took a Drug to Prevent AIDS. Then He Couldn’t Get Disability Insurance. |
| 2/12/2018 The New York Times Online |
| McNeil, Donald |
| Three years ago, Dr. Philip J. Cheng, a urology resident at Harvard’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital, nicked himself while preparing an H.I.V.-positive patient for surgery. The practice — called PrEP, short for pre-exposure prophylaxis — is safe and highly effective. Several studies have shown that users who take the drug daily are at nearly zero risk of H.I.V. infection. But when Dr. Cheng applied for disability insurance — which many young doctors do to protect a lifetime’s worth of income should they be hurt — he was told that, because he was taking Truvada, he could have only a five-year policy. |
| Politics News |
| White House Proposes $4.4 Trillion Budget That Adds $7 Trillion to Deficits |
| 2/12/2018 The New York Times Online |
| Davis, Julie Hirschfeld |
| President Trump sent Congress a $4.4 trillion budget proposal on Monday outlining steep cuts to domestic programs, large increases in military spending and a ballooning federal deficit that illustrates how far Republicans have strayed from their longtime embrace of balanced budgets. |
| Trump fires first salvo on drug prices |
| 2/12/2018 The Hill Online |
| Sullivan, Peter |
| President Trump is beginning to move on high drug prices, unveiling a series of modest proposals in his budget request released Monday. It’s the first time Trump has issued major proposals to lower drug prices since coming to the White House, despite criticizing pharmaceutical companies last year and accusing them of “getting away with murder.” |
| McCain urges Trump to make good on promise to address high drug prices |
| 2/12/2018 The Hill Online |
| Hellmann, Jessie |
| Sens. John McCain and Tammy Baldwin on Monday called on President Trump to make good on his promise to lower drug prices, writing that the problem "is only getting worse." The Trump administration has yet to take substantive action toward reducing the cost of prescription drugs despite promising to do so several times last year and in his State of the Union address last month. |
| Budget deal could boost credit for safety-net hospitals |
| 2/12/2018 Modern Healthcare Online |
| Bannow, Tara |
| Congress’ decision to delay Medicaid disproportionate-share hospital payment cuts has the double benefit of sprucing up the credit quality of safety-net hospitals and local governments, Moody’s Investors Service said Monday. |
| Republicans Need a Nudge to Lower Health Care Costs |
| 2/12/2018 The New York Times Online |
| Chen, Lanhee; Capretta, James |
| Republicans in Congress and the Trump administration repealed the penalties associated with the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate in the tax act that passed in December. Now they need to replace the mandate with something that will address rising premiums and command broader support. Automatic enrollment into health insurance plans is a good place to start. |
| Opioid makers gave $10M to advocacy groups amid epidemic |
| 2/12/2018 Associated Press Online |
| Perrone, Matthew; Mulvihill, Geoff |
| Companies selling some of the most lucrative prescription painkillers funneled millions of dollars to advocacy groups that in turn promoted the medications’ use, according to a report released Monday by a U.S. senator. |
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