Hospital group ‘negotiating’ end to freeze on Fresno Unified retirees’ insurance
The region’s largest hospital system said it remained at an impasse with Fresno Unified’s for-profit health insurer on reimbursement rates amid negotiations to restore the health care services district retirees abruptly lost on New Year’s Day.
About 6,200 Fresno Unified retirees and their dependents lost access to Community Health System’s network of hospitals and clinics after CHS and Aetna, one of the district’s insurers, failed to reach an agreement on reimbursement rates. About 1,500 of the retirees received primary medical care services under the Community Health System network, according to the district.
“We are actively negotiating with Aetna and are committed to reaching an agreement that allows us to continue providing high-quality care at a fair rate,” Aldo De La Torre, Community’s division president of insurance services and managed care, said in a statement.
“Our ability to provide high-quality, accessible care to the entire community depends on contracts that fairly reimburse physicians, nurses, and care teams for the services they deliver,” De La Torre said. “To date, Aetna has not offered terms that meet that standard.”
It remains unclear when the two parties will resolve the dispute. Meanwhile, some district retirees say they have been denied urgent treatment or have been asked to pay upfront for Community health care services, according to Fresno Unified officials.
“Over the past two weeks, my office, our district team and our trustees have been inundated with messages from retirees,” Misty Her, Fresno Unified superintendent, said at a Monday’s press conference. “They have shared countless alarming accounts of doctors abruptly discontinuing their care, delays or denials in accessing medications, and being turned away from essential services.”
District officials said it could take months to transfer retirees from one insurer to another.
Fresno Unified and its teachers union called on Community Health to restore retiree healthcare access, even if it meant billing Aetna as an out-of-network provider.
“Regional Medical turned a contract dispute into a healthcare crisis by choosing to deny in-network care to our retirees. To be absolutely clear, Community Regional Medical has an option, and always has had an option, to continue to provide services to our retirees during this negotiation process and simply bill their insurer for reimbursement,” said Manuel Bonilla, president of the Fresno Teachers Association. “That is a typical practice in situations like this across the country, and they chose not to do that.”
Nancy Lind, a retired teacher, said her scheduled MRI was cancelled. When she called the district’s benefits personnel, she was told to “find another doctor” if her doctors at Clovis Community Community Medical Center were no longer willing to bill Atena, Lind said.
“Now I’m out of medication tonight. There are no refills. Three of my things don’t have any refills. They have to contact the doctor. I don’t have a doctor. So how am I supposed to get that,” Lind said. “I just hate that I don’t have any of my doctors now. Everything I had was through a Community hospital.”
Representatives from labor unions, which have a majority of votes on Fresno Unified’s Joint Health Management Board that oversees retiree benefits, said they planned to announce alternative insurance options at a board meeting on Thursday.
“What is becoming increasingly clear is that this is not an isolated dispute on the part of a broader pattern a healthcare provider using its market dominance to pressure insurance carriers into higher payments, and those costs are ultimately passed on to working families, to patients, and in this case, retirees,” said Bonilla. “Many of the community will remember in 2023 when hundred of thousands of employees in Fresno County lost in-network access to Community Regional Medical Centers for nearly six months over a similar contract dispute.”
This story was originally published January 13, 2026 at 2:03 PM.
