Bad News For Anyone Who Actually Thought Trump Was Gonna Get Them Free IVF
That was never going to happen.
Last year, when Donald Trump was running for President, he made a pretty strange pledge for a Republican. He promised that he was going to make in vitro fertilization free, either by having the government pay for it or by requiring insurance companies to cover it. It was an unusual choice, not just because Republicans sure don’t like government “handouts” or telling health insurance companies what they can’t do, but also because a rather large percentage of anti-abortion rights people think IVF is murder.
But it worked. I certainly recall a lot of people saying they were going to vote for Trump specifically because of the IVF thing. Like this lady who lost her job with the US Forest Service thanks to DOGE cuts.
"Your government will pay for or your insurance company will be mandated to pay for all costs associated with IVF treatment," he said in August 2024. The next month, all but two Senate Republicans voted, for the second time, against advancing a bill meant to preserve access to IVF.
And, to be fair, he did issue an executive order back in February, announcing that it would be “the policy of my Administration to ensure reliable access to IVF treatment, including by easing unnecessary statutory or regulatory burdens to make IVF treatment drastically more affordable.”
He did not, however, include any actual directives for how that ought to happen. Rather, he stated that “[w]ithin 90 days of the date of this order, the Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy shall submit to the President a list of policy recommendations on protecting IVF access and aggressively reducing out-of-pocket and health plan costs for IVF treatment.”
That date came and went in May. It’s now been over twice that amount of time and there’s still nothing.
According to a report from the Washington Post this weekend, “two people with knowledge of internal discussions” say that there is no current plan to do anything about this.
More than six months into his second term […] the Trump administration has not publicly proposed new federal subsidies to make IVF free or more affordable. In addition, White House officials are backing away from proposals discussed internally to mandate IVF coverage for the roughly 50 million people on the Obamacare exchanges, said [sources], who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations.
A senior administration official, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal talks, said that while expanding IVF access remains a “huge priority” for Trump, the president can’t legally make IVF an essential health benefit without Congress first approving legislation to do so. It is unclear whether the administration plans to ask lawmakers to take up a bill, but the two people said that forcing insurance companies to cover IVF is not currently on the table
Surprise! But not really!
Some outside groups, along with Democratic Senators Cory Booker and Tammy Duckworth and Rep. Lauren Underwood, have been pushing for IVF to be included as an “essential health benefit” on ACA marketplace plans, which the White House has reportedly also “considered.” Given that this would require approval from Senate and House Republicans, they have likely not considered it enough to actually push for it. Granted, it would also require finding doctors that take marketplace plans and who also perform IVF, and it’s hard to imagine that would be an easy task.
Despite the policy’s appeal, this has always been something of a case of Trump understanding the words but not the music behind some of his supporters’ beliefs. Pronatalism has been big in conservative circles for some time now, but it’s not just that they want more babies. They want more white Christian babies, for the purpose of ensuring an ongoing white Christian majority, and they want women to have so many of them that they have to quit their jobs and stay home. Those are the ends, babies are the means. A policy that would make IVF available and affordable to all would not help what it is they are trying to accomplish.
Personally, as much as I think it would be lovely for IVF to be available and affordable to all, I do think it would be some bullshit for the government to pay for that medical procedure and not any other kind of medical treatment. Like, we’re still going to make people pay money for being victims of crime, for getting cancer, for preventative measures that will keep them from getting seriously sick down the line, but we’d pay for IVF? That’s a not a great triage system.
I mean, hell. It costs a crazy amount of money to be pregnant and give birth. Maybe take a look at that first. No?
In addition to not actually making IVF free or affordable, the Trump administration has found myriad ways to make having a child even more financially burdensome for those without a lot of money, by cutting Medicaid and food stamps. While Head Start programs will be allowed to continue (for the time being?), many of them have been so starved of funds that they have to shut down. They have even cut funds for investigating child abuse.
Via ProPublica:
The Department of Education, for instance, has rescinded as much as $3 billion in pandemic-recovery funding for schools, which would have been used for everything from tutoring services for Maryland students who’ve fallen behind to making the air safer to breathe and the water safer to drink for students in Flint, Michigan. The Department of Agriculture, meanwhile, has canceled $660 million in promised grants to farm-to-school programs, which had been providing fresh meat and produce to school cafeterias while supporting small farmers.
At the Department of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the agency’s secretary, has dismissed all of the staff that had distributed $1.7 billion annually in Social Services Block Grant money, which many states have long depended on to be able to run their child welfare, foster care and adoption systems, including birth family visitation, caseworker training and more. The grants also fund day care, counseling and disability services for kids. (It is unclear whether anyone remains at HHS who would know how to get all of that funding out the door or whether it will now be administered by White House appointees.)
Sadly, they will very definitely spend the rest of this term making things harder for low-income families who already have a hard enough time getting by as it is, never mind getting anyone any free IVF.
PREVIOUSLY ON WONKETTE!
If you believe anything Trump says that is your fault at this time.
Has everyone in this country forgotten what he did the first time he sat in the Oval Office? WHY WOULD ANYONE, OTHER THAN AN IDIOT, BELIEVE ANYTHING THAT CAME OUT OF THAT MOUTH??? JFC, THIS IS A STUPID COUNTRY!