The Trump administration has entered into a most-favored-nation pricing deal with the manufacturer of several commonly-used fertility drugs in an effort to lower the cost of in-vitro fertilization, President Donald Trump announced on Thursday.
Trump told reporters from the Oval Office that this was a step towards lowering costs for patients, although the move falls far short of his campaign pledge to make IVF free for all Americans.
Trump called the move a “historic victory.”
“In the Trump administration, we want to make it easier for all couples to have babies, raise children and have the families they’ve always dreamed about,” Trump told reporters from the Oval Office.
IVF typically costs between $15,000 and $20,000, going up to as much as $25,000 for a single cycle, but those costs normally do not include the price of medication, so it’s unclear how much Trump’s announced deal would actually cut costs for people undergoing fertility treatments.
Kaylen Silverberg, chair of Americans for IVF’s advisory board and an adviser on IVF to the White House, told NOTUS the announcement was not “100% of what we wanted,” but that “the fact that that we got what we got today — that our patients got what we got today — is just a godsend.”
Silverberg estimated that IVF patients could save between $2,000 to $3,000 due to the lower drug prices.
IVF typically costs between $15,000 and $20,000 for a single cycle, but those costs normally do not include the price of medication, so it’s unclear how much Trump’s announced deal would actually cut costs for people undergoing fertility treatments.
The most-favored-nations deal with EMD Serono, the U.S. subsidiary of Merck, only applies to three of its medications that are used during IVF.
“When all three therapies are used in a typical IVF protocol, patients will access an 84% discount off list prices,” the company said in a press release. It was not immediately clear how many IVF patients would benefit from the reduced prices.
Neither EMD Serono nor its parent company have yet entered into a most-favored-nation pricing deal for medications other than three named on Thursday, despite an executive order and letter to pharmaceutical companies from the administration demanding they do so by late September. Two other large manufacturers, Pfizer and AstraZeneca, entered into agreements with the administration earlier this month to offer their drugs at prices that match those paid by other peer nations.
EMD Serono also announced that the company would file for Food and Drug Administration approval of a fourth fertility medication not currently available in the U.S. under the FDA Commissioner’s National Priority Voucher program, which aims to reduce the review time to a matter of months. Silverberg said that having the new drugs manufactured in the U.S. “is going to make them less expensive.”
Trump also announced that his administration would issue guidance encouraging employers to offer in vitro fertilization insurance coverage — but not going so far as to require the coverage or supply subsidies to employers.
The guidance will be issued by the Department of Labor, the Treasury Department, and the Department of Health and Human Services and will outline a “new benefit option” for employers that would allow, but not require, employers to offer IVF as a stand-alone benefit, according to a senior administration official.
Employers would then choose the dollar amount of IVF coverage they want to provide to employees who want to access infertility treatments. It’s unclear how many employers would be interested in offering this benefit — a senior administration official did not name any legal or financial incentives other than “to bring a healthy baby into the world at the lowest possible cost.”
A senior administration official said there were no ongoing discussions to offer subsidies to employers who offer IVF benefits. They said subsidies did not seem necessary given the option to offer IVF as a separate benefit and efforts to lower drug prices more broadly.
“We believe that there is significant market demand from employers to offer fertility benefits,” they said.
Insurance coverage for IVF is incredibly limited in the U.S. Only one in five employers provide infertility treatment benefits to their employees, according to Resolve: The National Fertility Association.
What the administration is proposing is not exactly novel. In states where employers are required to offer insurance policies that offer infertility treatment coverage, they are not required to fully pay for the procedure.
The announcement comes eight months after Trump signed an executive order directing the Domestic Policy Council to come up with policies to “aggressively” reduce costs for patients. They delivered a report of recommendations to the president in May, but that report has not been released.
NOTUS previously reported that some of the options White House officials were considering in the spring included declaring IVF an “essential health benefit” under the Affordable Care Act, offering tax credits to offset costs, potentially requiring private insurers to cover fertility treatment, providing coverage for military members and veterans or potentially embracing the MAHA-endorsed practice of restorative reproductive medicine, also a favorite of the anti-abortion movement.
Silverberg, who was briefed by White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt and Domestic Policy Council Deputy Director Heidi Overton ahead of the announcement, told NOTUS that he hoped the other options would be explored in the future. He added that based on the call, he expected this to be just the first IVF-related announcement from the president.
As for legislative action, Reps. Zach Nunn (R) and Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D), along with Silverberg, have been working to introduce legislation to require some private health insurers to cover fertility treatment costs. Nunn had indicated to NOTUS that he planned to officially file the legislation after Congress passed Trump’s reconciliation bill.
However, the president signed the reconciliation bill into law in July, and the IVF bill has yet to be introduced. Silverberg said that following the president’s announcement, “we’ll probably go back to work on that.”
“I think that we’d like to give the President as many choices as he’s willing to entertain,” Silverberg said.