Trump free IVF plan has Harris, Congress dubious

Former President Donald Trump says that he wants to make in vitro fertilization treatments free of cost, either by requiring insurance companies to cover the procedure or federally funding it.

“Because we want more babies, to put it very nicely,” Trump said at a campaign rally in Michigan on Aug. 29.

Since then, neither Trump nor his campaign has offered details on how such a plan might be paid for. Still, his verbal support brought the fertility treatments to the center of a presidential race where both Trump and Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris are vying for the votes of politically women.

But health care experts are skeptical that Trump could implement such a policy on his own. And winning support for free IVF among his fellow Republicans in Congress could prove exceptionally difficult.

“The ability of the executive to do this unilaterally is quite limited,” said Alina Salganicoff, a senior vice president and the director of the Women’s Health Policy Program at KFF.

Mandating that insurers pay for IVF would require legislation in Congress, Salganicoff said. Another potential option would be to convince a panel of experts to add IVF to the list of fully covered women’s preventative services under the Affordable Care Act. This would pose several challenges, not least of which is that Trump has tried to repeal the ACA.

It would also be difficult for members of Congress to rationalize making a single treatment like IVF free, said Sabrina Corlette, co-director of the Center on Health Insurance Reforms at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy.

“What about chemotherapy? What about insulin? What about any other number of life-saving services that people need?” she said.

Having the government pay for IVF would similarly require an act of Congress. Lawmakers need to allocate the funds, and the cost of such a program would likely be eye-popping, experts said.

A single cycle of IVF costs over $23,000, according to FertilityIQ. Many women need four or more cycles to have a successful birth.

Another concern is that insurers required to cover IVF treatments would pass on these extra costs to consumers, said Corlette.

“We’re talking about an expensive service, and if you reduce all financial barriers to it, it would add to premiums for sure,” Corlette said.

Trump “supports universal access to contraception and IVF,” Karoline Leavitt, the Trump campaign’s national press secretary, told CNBC in response to a question about the proposal. Leavitt declined to address how this might be paid for.

These are likely some of the reasons that Harris, who has positioned herself as a champion for women’s reproductive rights, hasn’t come out with a similar proposal, Salganicoff said.

“My…