My name is Michael Johnson. For 12 years I worked as an executive at Blue Shield of California, a big nonprofit health insurer—and witnessed firsthand how Blue Shield evades its duties as a nonprofit. In 2014, I detailed my concerns to the CEO, but he dismissed them. The following year I resigned and began speaking out publicly.

Some highlights of my whistleblowing:

Tipping off the Los Angeles Times to information that led the paper to uncover the revocation of Blue Shield’s tax exemption, which until then had been kept under wraps.
Prompting intensified regulatory scrutiny of a planned $1.2 billion acquisition deal by Blue Shield.
Revealing that statements Blue Shield made to California’s health plan regulator in a bid to avoid being regulated as a nonprofit directly contradicted statements it had made to tax authorities when its nonprofit tax exemption was under audit.
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.
Fighting a lawsuit by Blue Shield against my whistleblowing.
Suing for disclosure of the secretive reasoning behind a decision by the state health plan regulator to allow Blue Shield’s management to privatize billions of dollars in nonprofit assets.