Investigating and publicizing abuses of the public trust by the nonprofit healthcare industry.

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PREVIOUSLY secret TAX AUDIT DOCUMENTS SHOW BLUE SHIELD thwarted enforcement of its NONPROFIT duty TO SERVE THE PUBLIC GOOD by misleading regulators

Last fall, Blue Shield of California’s leaders quietly won approval from the state’s health plan regulator to transfer ownership of the nonprofit insurer, which holds billions of dollars in charitable assets, to a Delaware corporation. The approval relied in large part on Blue Shield’s assertion that it is a special type of nonprofit, with no duty to serve the public good. However, newly public documents show Blue Shield has claimed the opposite to state tax authorities. In two letters to the regulator, I’ve detailed the previously secret information revealing the truth about Blue Shield’s nonprofit obligations and called on the regulator to rescind approval of the transfer of ownership and take steps to force Blue Shield to act like a real nonprofit.

The Plan to Take Nonprofit BCBS of Louisiana For-Profit

The directors and CEO of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Louisiana have cut a deal to sell the nonprofit health plan to Elevance Health, the healthcare conglomerate formerly named Anthem. If approved by regulators, the deal would provide compensation of over $1 million to each of BCBSLA’s directors and give them control over a $3 billion “foundation” created from sale proceeds, with minimal restrictions over the use of that money. For health care consumers, the sale threatens significantly higher health insurance premiums. Read more.

Did BLUE SHIELD OF CAlifornia commit a $111 million tax fraud?

In 2015, Blue Shield’s top lawyer concluded in a written analysis that a competitor’s exclusion of certain revenue from amounts reported to the IRS amounted to tax evasion. The following year, Blue Shield began doing exactly what its competitor had done.