Dive Brief:
- Employers can now offer standalone fertility treatment benefits, similar to dental, vision and life insurance, according to a White House fact sheet released Thursday.
- The U.S. departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Treasury that same day issued joint guidance for employers explaining how to structure benefits to expand access to in vitro fertilization and other fertility treatments.
- The departments also will issue regulations aimed at further reducing barriers for employers to offer fertility benefits, the fact sheet noted.
Dive Insight:
Fertility benefits can be offered as excepted benefits — those not subject to Affordable Care Act requirements — under two of the four designations: independent, noncoordinated excepted benefits and limited excepted benefits. Future rulemaking will aim to expand the ways employers can provide fertility benefits as limited excepted benefits, DOL said.
In the guidance, DOL and the other agencies answered frequently asked questions, clarifying that, for example, an employee need not enroll in an employer’s traditional group health plan for a specified disease or illness policy to qualify as an independent, noncoordinated benefit. Such policies may cover benefits related to infertility. A worker enrolled in a fertility benefit offered as an independent, noncoordinated excepted benefit would also be free to contribute to a health savings account, the departments explained.
Employers may also offer excepted benefit HRAs that reimburse employees’ out-of-pocket fertility care benefits, and may offer benefits for coaching and navigator services to help employees understand their fertility options under an employee assistance program — both examples of how employers can approach fertility benefits as limited excepted benefits.
President Donald Trump has advocated for more accessible IVF options, even saying on the campaign trail that he would mandate insurance or government coverage for treatments related to the procedure. In February, Trump signed an executive order meant to stimulate policy recommendations to “aggressively” reduce out-of-pocket costs for IVF.
A November 2024 report by Mercer found nearly half of employers with 500 or more employees covered IVF, and that 70% of the largest employers, those with 20,000 or more workers, covered the treatments. The White House fact sheet specifically drew attention to small- and medium-sized employers, which it said typically offer “sparse” coverage.
Workers have emphasized the importance of fertility benefits via surveys; only one-third of employees said they could independently afford fertility treatments, according to a 2023 Carrot Fertility survey. Sixty-five percent of those surveyed, which included workers either planning or building a family, said they would switch jobs to work for a company that provided fertility benefits.
