My wife and I bought 5 shares of WellPoint (or Anthem, or Blue Cross) in 2005 and have been coming to these annual meetings since. We’re all getting to know each other. Many of the WellPoint employees seem to genuinely like us. But not all.

Everyone loves to pick on the Affordable Care Act (ACA), and well they should, having been written by and for the health care industry. We must keep the pressure up on the health care industry as long as its fiduciary responsibility to investors requires finding ways to avoid caring for the sick while sucking billions out of taxpayers’ pockets.

It’s a nice trick, WellPoint: send your VP to write a law mandating that the middle class buy shitty products like yours, then watch that VP move into the executive branch to “oversee” the implementation of the law. What could go wrong?!?!

On Friday afternoon May 21, WellPoint released the official tally for the voting from their contentions annual shareholders meeting on the 18th. Our resolution to return Wellpoint to non-profit status received over 30 million votes, 9.4% of the shares voted. That is a jaw dropping vote of no confidence in the management of this company. But the story isn’t over yet. Our shareholder resolution for WellPoint to return to its non-profit Blue Cross roots will be back next year. And the SEC has proposed a new regulation that would allow shareholders to directly nominate corporate board members called “Proxy Access.” If this goes into effect this fall as expected, I intend to run for the WellPoint board.

Using some of the strongest language I’ve ever seen from this group, Health Care for America Now basically charged WellPoint with murder today, responding to the Murray Waas article showing that the insurance giant systematically dropped breast cancer patients from the rolls.

The fact that the health care bill was written by WellPoint for the benefit of Wellpoint is bad enough. The fact that Max Baucus celebrates this is worse. And the fact that WellPoint jammed the bill through with the help of Evan Bayh, who is adding to his personal fortune at the expense of breast cancer patients, is absolutely despicable.

The insurance companies are off and running and their lobbyists are going to be extremely busy. The gaming of the new system has already begun in state legislators’ and insurance commissioners’ offices, and in regulatory drafting committees far away from scrutiny by the media and the public. Let’s just hope the whole thing is not completely gutted between now and 2014 when the biggest changes to health care begin.

The insurance industry has spent their money well, spreading it across both parties. They got what they paid for with this neoliberal health care bill.

We all have to appreciate honesty and transparency in this age of misdirection, obfuscation, and triangulation. So, let me rise and extend my compliments to Senator Max Sieben Baucus (D-MT), who, in the midst of a dewy-eyed tribute on the Senate floor, said just about all you need to know about the new health care reform law, and the 14-month fight to shape it.

Goldman says the “bear case” scenario — in which earnings per share for the top five insurers would decline an estimated one percent from 2010 through 2019 and the variance with current valuation is projected to be negative 36 percent. If nothing is done, they estimate stock prices will increase 47%.