So much for Trump’s promise of free IVF
Calling it a “historic victory” with his usual undeserved boasting, President Donald Trump announcement a new effort to make in vitro fertilization – better known as IVF – more accessible.
“In the Trump administration, we want to make it easier for all couples to have babies, raise children and build the family they’ve always dreamed of,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Thursday.
IVF is a medical procedure that helps people suffering from infertility conceive a child by fertilizing an egg outside the body and then implanting the embryo.
Trump’s announcement boiled down to two things: a Most Favored Nation award for drugs and a polite request for companies to cover IVF in their health care plans, without any sticks or carrots to force them to do so.
If you’re wondering why Trump cares, it’s part of the right’s frightening efforts to encouraging white women to have more babiesa particular obsession of Elon Musk.
The most favored nation part is actually good. Americans spend much more on the same drugs than consumers in other countries. Under this type of policy, drugmakers would be required to offer Americans the lowest price they charge in any other developed country.
It’s an idea that has been floated for years by both parties, including under the Biden and Trump administrations, as a way to combat price gouging of pharmaceuticals. Americans usually pay two to three times more for the same drugs sold in Canada, Europe or Japan. Proposals to allow Americans to import cheaper Canadian drugs have drawn bipartisan applause, but relentless industry lobbying — and similarly bipartisan cowardice — have always killed them.
Reducing drug prices is a laudable goal, but when it comes to IVF, it does little to make a difference. The $15,000 to $20,000 cost of a typical IVF cycle does not include necessary medications, so even a few thousand dollars in savings on medications still leaves families priced out. This is a modest reduction disguised as a miracle, and far from Trump’s 2024 campaign promise to make IVF free.
“Under the Trump administration, we are going to pay for this treatment,” he said at the time. “We’re going to demand that the insurance company pay.”
It’s almost impressive how easily he promises everything without having a plan to carry out.
This promise would not have come cheap.
“The Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology says its member clinics performed 389,993 IVF cycles in 2022” NBC reported at the time. “At a cost of about $20,000 each, that would amount to $7.8 billion for that year.” But this only represents a fifth of the 40 billion dollars Trump sends to Argentina to save his friend Javier Milei. (Of course, demand would increase if IVF was free, so maybe the cost could be… half that of Argentina?)
It’s in the second part of his announcement, urging companies to cover expensive treatments, that everything descends into absurdity.
According to NOTUSthe Departments of Labor, Treasury, and Health and Human Services will provide “guidance” enabling a “new benefit option” that would allow – but not require – employers to offer IVF as a stand-alone benefit. And with no carrot, no stick, no reason for a company that doesn’t already offer this to suddenly start.
When asked why businesses should care, a senior administration official said they should want to “deliver a healthy baby into the world at the lowest possible cost.” Oh yeah, let’s dig into those corporate charters for the part about “delivering healthy babies” – at their own expense.
You want companies to do this, you either force them or pay them.
But in reality, if bringing healthy babies into the world is such a noble goal, why can’t Trump find the necessary funds like he found for Argentina? Because he doesn’t really care. It’s easier to announce something that seems compassionate than to spend a dime to make it happen.
Not really a victory. Certainly not historical. Another Trumpian bullshit.
