Updated August 28, 2025
We are actively negotiating in good faith to renew our network relationship with Ascension Wisconsin
We are engaged in good-faith negotiation with Ascension Wisconsin (Ascension) to renew our network relationship. Our goal is to reach an agreement that is affordable for Wisconsin families and employers while providing continued access to Ascension’s hospitals and physicians throughout the state.
If we are unable to reach an agreement, Ascension’s hospitals and providers in Wisconsin will be out of network for members enrolled in the following plans, effective Oct. 1, 2025:
- Employer-sponsored and individual commercial plans
- Medicare Advantage plans, including Group Retiree and Dual Special Needs Plans (DSNP)
- UnitedHealthcare Community Plans in Wisconsin (Medicaid)
Optum Behavioral Health is not impacted by this negotiation and will continue to remain in-network with Ascension Wisconsin, regardless of the outcome of our negotiation.
Ascension is seeking unsustainable price hikes that are not affordable and would increase health care costs by nearly $55 million for consumers and employers in Wisconsin.
Excessive rate demands have an impact on the cost of premiums as well as out-of-pocket costs for the people we serve, while also driving up the cost to do business for employers.
We have a responsibility to provide the people we serve with access to quality health care while also helping to contain rapidly rising health care costs. We are proposing market-competitive rates that will continue to reimburse Ascension fairly and similarly to its peers while slowing the unsustainable rise in health care costs.
We are committed to engaging in productive, good-faith negotiation and urge Ascension to provide a proposal that is affordable for families and employers in Wisconsin.
Ascension’s demands for significant price hikes for our Medicaid and Medicare Advantage plans would make the health system the most expensive in our network in southeastern Wisconsin.
Ascension’s proposal would significantly exceed the average cost of all other providers in our Medicare Advantage and Medicaid networks in the state.
If we agreed to Asension’s demands, health care costs would increase for people enrolled in our Medicare Advantage plans while also impacting the benefits these seniors rely on.
Meanwhile, the states where we operate our Medicaid plans have asked us to support their efforts to provide quality health care coverage to their residents while also helping to contain rapidly rising health care costs. We take this responsibility seriously and are committed to being a good steward of taxpayer dollars. Ascension’s proposal would make them an outlier in our Medicaid network in the state and would have a substantial impact on health care costs.
Employers would face large cost increases if we agreed to Ascension’s demands.
More than 80% of our employer-sponsored members in Wisconsin are enrolled in self-funded plans, which means that these employers pay the cost of their employees’ medical bills themselves rather than relying on UnitedHealthcare to pay those claims.
A majority of the price hike Ascension is seeking would come out of the operating budgets of our self-funded employers.
Our employer group customers have charged us with the responsibility of providing their employees access to quality, affordable health care. We pass any savings from negotiating more competitive rates directly to our self-funded customers, which they could in turn use to hold premiums steady for employees or to lower them in some cases. Employers can also use any savings to enhance benefits, increase salaries or help grow their organization.
As the prices for health care continue to rise, employers have less money available to help grow the business through things like investments in new technologies or salary increases for hard-working employees.
We are asking Ascension to work with us to reach an agreement at fair, market-competitive rates that will provide the people and employers we serve with continued access to affordable care.
Ascension is putting patients in the middle of this negotiation presumably in an effort to pressure us to agree to the price hikes it is seeking.
We proposed to extend our current contract with Ascension, which would have allowed our organizations additional time to negotiate without creating stress and anxiety for our members. Ascension refused, unnecessarily putting people in the middle of our discussions.