Activist investors sue UnitedHealth to force annual reporting on patient care access

A faith-based group known for activist investing is suing UnitedHealth Group over the company’s failure to provide details on how its history of mergers and acquisitions have impacted the price of patient care and overall access to services.

Canada-based Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary of Quebec, a member of the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR), is leading the lawsuit after UnitedHealth did not provide details on the impacts of its vertical integration in its latest annual proxy filing.

The proposal was first made back in January 2025, when the Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary put forward the motion, alongside Trillium Asset Management. At the time, this earned support from Center for Health & Democracy, a public health advocacy group.

Representing its over 300 member organizations, including the Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary of Quebec, the ICCR also expressed support from the beginning of the push for reporting.

In 2025, the ask was for UnitedHealthcare, the insurance arm of UnitedHealth Group, to look into the impacts claims denials have on patients, as part of a broader effort to report on any of the company’s practices that may limit or delay a person’s access to care.

The healthcare giant ultimately denied that request, opting not to bring it up for vote, as an official proposal. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) backed the decision, writing a letter in response to the new lawsuit that states UnitedHealth had a “reasonable basis to exclude the proposal” and that the SEC does “not object if the company excludes the proposal from its proxy materials.”

In other words, the SEC does not plan to intervene in these types of investor squabbles, so long as the company is following federal regulations. 

A lawsuit is now the only path forward, in which case the goal would be to have a federal court order UnitedHealth to comply and to include such reporting in its annual proxy filing. However, to accomplish that, plaintiffs will need to show there is a policy issue in play that extends beyond the SEC’s ability to regulate.

They’ll need to successfully show their request is in the public interest, and that more knowledge about UnitedHealth’s ownership over healthcare resources would be of benefit to the public at large, not merely regulators and investors.

ICCR irked by hands-off SEC

In a press release, the ICCR said that the SEC stopped reviewing company requests to exclude shareholder proposals in November 2025, issuing “no objection” letters instead

The group argues that the SEC once “provided meaningful guidance to companies and investors and facilitated” productive conversations and negotiations between companies and shareholders, something the agency now refuses to do. 

“As these developments took shape, many investors sounded the alarm about the chilling effect that these changes could have on shareholder engagement,” the ICCR wrote. “Corporate governance experts expressed concern that in the absence of meaningful guidance from the SEC, companies could face legal risk if they were to unilaterally exclude a proposal from the proxy.  

“As a result of the shift in policy, there have already been at least five lawsuits filed by shareholders against companies that sought to exploit these rule changes, and three of these cases have already settled,” the group added. 

It’s unclear what chance the case has.