Paul Markovich, CEO of the parent company of Blue Shield of California, where I worked for a dozen years, has a message for everyone who supports reforming health care to put people over profits: he’s our champion.

In January, he launched what he calls a “movement” for reform, with the goal of “rebuilding health care from the inside out, bringing greater transparency, accountability, and a renewed focus on people.” The movement, which Markovich has dubbed “Worthy,” consists primarily of a website outlining a range of reform ideas, from digitizing health records to providing “affordable coverage for all.” As ambitious as the goal is, his website says there’s reason to hope for success: “We’ve got a man on the inside.”

In a campaign-style video, that man is presented as a health insurance CEO boldly taking on his own industry. It shows Markovich testifying before Congress, declaring our health care system “broken” and unaffordable, and pledging to work “to create a system that is truly worthy of us.” It ends with a montage of newspaper clippings lauding his comments.

“Every movement has to start somewhere,” a headline on the website says, followed by another announcing: “Meet Paul Markovich.” Below that is a personal essay in which he describes his career as a mission since early adulthood “to make the health care system better” in order “to help everyone.”

But Markovich is also someone who collects over $11 million a year in salary paid for by policyholders, many of them struggling to afford coverage. And the insurer he runs has been denying medical care so aggressively and improperly that only 18.5% of its denials in 2024 for alleged lack of medical necessity were upheld after independent medical review – the worst rate of any major insurer in California.

And while many health insurers claim to prize the health of enrollees while they deny care to protect profits, Blue Shield of California does that as a nonprofit health plan. Even worse, it has gone to extraordinary lengths to avoid accountability for its core obligation as a nonprofit — to do good for the public.

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