Beginning in the 1930s, nonprofit Blue Cross voluntary pre-paid hospital plans were created across the U.S. to provide affordable healthcare coverage to millions of Americans. Wisconsin Blue Cross was chartered in 1939 as a “charitable and benevolent corporation” to cover hospitalization costs, later adding coverage for physician services and growing to become the state’s largest health insurer as Blue Cross & Blue Shield United of Wisconsin in the decades that followed. In 1994, the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association voted to allow its nonprofit members to become for-profit corporations. Blue Cross & Blue Shield plans interested in converting to for-profit entities would have to divest their assets.

In Wisconsin, Blue Cross & Blue Shield United’s transformation, precipitated by the planned retirement of its CEO, resulted in a $618 million gift made in 1999 to the people of Wisconsin, split evenly between the state’s two medical schools—the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and the Medical College of Wisconsin. 

Learn more about AHW’s history and impact in Wisconsin—from the time we made our first grant awards in 2004 to our rise to become Wisconsin’s largest health philanthropy.