By Chad Terhune
Los Angeles Times, August 28, 2012
Investors in health insurance giant WellPoint Inc., which runs Anthem Blue Cross in California, are pressing for a change in top management as criticism intensifies about the company’s lagging stock, managerial missteps and disappointing earnings.
Shareholder complaints about WellPoint’s chairwoman and chief executive, Angela Braly, have grown louder since last month, when the Indianapolis company posted another anemic quarter and cut its full-year profit outlook as its enrollment fell again.
The investor unrest follows years of consumer fury that beset WellPoint as it repeatedly raised premiums on many families and small businesses by 10% or more.
A New York hedge fund, Royal Capital Management, sent a letter to WellPoint’s board last week saying that Braly has “failed miserably” as CEO and that “it is incumbent upon the board of directors to fulfill its fiduciary responsibility to shareholders by changing leadership.”
Other influential WellPoint shareholders, such as Leon Cooperman’s Omega Advisors hedge fund in New York, have expressed similar concerns about the company’s lackluster performance, particularly compared with its chief competitors’, and they have urged the board to replace Braly.
Thus far, WellPoint’s board has voiced strong support for Braly. “The board has been fully involved in the strategy WellPoint is pursuing and is supportive of the strategy and our management team,” Jacquelyn Ward, the company’s lead outside director, said in a statement last month after analysts began questioning management’s performance.
“Braly has presided over the most arbitrary and capricious health insurance rate hikes of our time,” said Jamie Court, president of Consumer Watchdog, an advocacy group in Santa Monica. “Now she is learning the rules of Wall Street: Cross policyholders all you want, but don’t step on the wallets of shareholders.”
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-wellpoint-under-fire-20120828,0,4090962.story
Comment:
By Don McCanne, MD
Our politicians have left the private insurance industry in charge of our health care, but what is this industry really all about? As Jamie Court says, “Cross policyholders all you want, but don’t step on the wallets of shareholders.”
Addendum to today’s Quote of the Day on Angela Braly:
Angela Braly resigned today as president and CEO of WellPoint.
It would be a mistake to celebrate this action as some sort of elimination of an evil-doer. She will be replaced. From the perspective of patients, nothing changed.
The action that we need is from the President and Congress. They need to eliminate the private insurers and replace them with an improved Medicare for all. Hold the celebration until we can accomplish that goal.