Healthcare Watch is my project to investigate and publicize abuses by the nonprofit healthcare industry. For 12 years I worked as an executive at Blue Shield of California. Like lots of other nonprofit insurers and hospitals, Blue Shield mostly ignores its duty to serve the public good and behaves in ways that make it almost indistinguishable from a for-profit company. I raised concerns internally, going up the chain to the CEO, about what looked to me like serious abuses of the public trust, but to no avail. So I resigned and began speaking out publicly.

Some highlights of my whistleblowing and advocacy:

• Prompting intensified regulatory scrutiny of a planned $1.2 billion acquisition deal by Blue Shield.

• Reporting to regulators evidence that Blue Shield shortchanged consumers by $34 million and prompting a class action lawsuit to force it to pay consumers what it owes them.

• Digging up and publicizing information showing that nonprofit Delta Dental had paid its CEO $14 million and provided executives with perks such as first class or charter air transport, travel for companions, and housing allowances.

• Fighting a lawsuit by Blue Shield against my whistleblowing.

• Suing for disclosure of the secretive reasoning behind a California regulator’s rulings that two nonprofits, Blue Shield and Delta Dental, have no obligation to serve the public good.

• Shinning a spotlight on corrupt elements of a planned sale of nonprofit BCBS of Louisiana to a for-profit healthcare conglomerate, helping to scuttle the deal.