President Donald Trump has said he wants to make in vitro fertilization more accessible. Lawmakers and advocates are giving him a chance to prove it by supporting an actual bill to cover costs for the procedure.
Reps. Zachary Nunn and Debbie Wasserman Schultz are planning to reintroduce a bipartisan bill — the HOPE with Fertility Services Act — that would require some private health insurers to cover fertility treatments, NOTUS has learned.
It would go several steps further than Trump’s recent executive order on IVF, which only directed the Domestic Policy Council to make policy recommendations to protect IVF and reduce costs. The White House celebrated the order as an expansion of access to the procedure, but funding or mandating coverage would require further action — and thus far, Trump hasn’t gotten behind a specific bill.
Nunn’s office is in active dialogue with the White House to get the president to back the bill, according to a source familiar with the conversations. The White House did not respond to NOTUS’ requests for comment.
“The administration has been very engaged and helpful on this front,” Nunn told NOTUS. In an earlier statement, the Iowa lawmaker said he is “optimistic that, in collaboration with President Trump, Congress will come together to pass a bipartisan solution to make fertility treatments more affordable and accessible for all Americans.”
When asked whether he expected Trump to talk about IVF and bring up the HOPE Act during Tuesday evening’s joint session, Nunn crossed his fingers and said, “I will keep you posted.”
A fact sheet from the White House on Trump’s Feb. 18 executive order says that when it comes to recommendations, “[p]riority will also be placed on addressing any current policies, including those that require legislation, that exacerbate the cost of IVF treatments.”
“We’re hoping that this means that the president is going to put the weight of his office” behind the HOPE Act, said Dr. Kaylen Silverberg, chair of the advisory board for Americans for IVF. The group worked alongside RESOLVE: The National Infertility Association and the American Society for Reproductive Medicine to draft the bill.
Advocates said Trump’s support would likely be necessary to get enough lawmakers to pass the bill.
“This Congress is incredibly responsive to the desires of the Trump administration, and so I think we’re going to need leadership from the White House to get that bill through,” said Sean Tipton, chief advocacy and policy officer for the American Society for Reproductive Medicine.
The HOPE with Fertility Services Act was first introduced in June by former Reps. Lori Chavez-DeRemer, now Trump’s pick to lead the Labor Department, and Susan Wild. The bill got broad bipartisan support in the 118th Congress, with 11 Democratic co-sponsors and 21 Republicans — the most GOP support any IVF-related legislation in Congress has gotten — but it never received a vote.
“We were heartened in the last Congress how much bipartisan support that it had, and that’s not been typical in the, literally, decades that I’ve worked on this issue,” Wasserman Schultz told NOTUS in an interview. “There’s a lot of bipartisan space to work here and I’m really hopeful about this bill, and the pun is very much intended.”
Democrats have questioned Republicans’ support for IVF access by pointing to their opposition to Democrats’ Right to IVF Act. Republicans say that bill is too broad — it would create a right to access IVF and issue a federal mandate to require all insurers to cover it.
The HOPE Act has a narrower focus, which sources that spoke to NOTUS suggest is why this specific bill has gotten more Republican backing than others. “It’s a straightforward, direct bill,” Wasserman Schultz said.
The legislation would amend a federal law, the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, to require employer-sponsored health insurance plans to cover IVF and other fertility treatments for people formally diagnosed with infertility. Because it deals with a labor-specific law, the bill’s backers are thrilled to have Chavez-DeRemer, who previously led the effort, as the likely labor secretary.
It “will obviously be a huge help to have a person inside the administration, both to help influence the bill’s passage, but also once we need to implement it,” Wasserman Schultz said.
Silverberg was in Washington last week to urge lawmakers to support the HOPE Act. He is confident that not only will the bill get more backing this Congress, it will also get a companion bill in the Senate, something that it did not have last year. He declined to name which senators could sponsor the bill.
“I think that we’re going to have an overwhelming number of sponsors and cosponsors and early signees and people who want to sponsor, but maybe they feel like they need to hang back a little bit so they’re not going to jump out at the very beginning,” Silverberg said. “But you know, when they see the momentum that we’re going to have, they’ll jump on board.”
Advocates have emphasized Trump’s statements on IVF as they lobby lawmakers to back the bill. Barb Collura, president and CEO of RESOLVE: The National Infertility Association, said they saw an inflection point when Trump pledged on the campaign trail to cover IVF costs.
“The minute we heard that, we were like, ‘Wait a minute, we’re already working on that, and we have a bill, and it’s bipartisan,’” Collura told NOTUS. “So when Trump was elected, I reached out to different folks on the Hill. … We wanted to be sure that folks on the Hill knew that this bill existed, and it did exactly what the president said.”
Silverberg suggested that Trump world has been aware of the bill since the campaign. Americans for IVF successfully pushed to add support for IVF to the Republican Party platform for the first time. Silverberg told NOTUS that while he met with members of the platform committee — led by close Trump allies Randy Evans, Russell Vought and Ed Martin — he “absolutely” brought up the HOPE Act.
“They were very favorable,” Silverberg said. “I think they’re very interested in it.”
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Oriana González is a reporter at NOTUS.