Family Building Advocacy Issues
The issues and bills listed below are supported by RESOLVE: The National Infertility Association and the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM). For more information, please contact Barbara Collura, President & CEO, RESOLVE at barb.collura@resolve.org, 703.506.2011, or Sarah Bogdan, Director of Government Affairs, ASRM at sbogdan@asrm.org.
Legislative Agenda:
Access to Care for All Americans
- There are states in the process of trying to restrict or ban access to IVF.
- We need federal laws that will ensure that everyone, regardless of location, maintains the right to build their chosen families and that healthcare providers are protected from penalization or criminalization.
Coverage at Work for All Americans
- Federal Employees have limited options for family building medical care. People who get their health insurance through the Exchanges are shut out of care in most of the U.S.
- Less than half of private employers offer comprehensive benefits to their employees for family building, yet in a recent survey of employers, 97% said that adding infertility coverage did not result in a significant increase in cost.*
- Only 14 states have mandated insurance coverage for infertility treatments that include IVF.
Removing Barriers to Family Building for the Military
- Military families face amplified challenges to family building through assisted reproduction and/or adoption due to frequent deployments and separations, frequent moves to new duty stations, and other military life
stressors like food insecurity, spouse underemployment/ unemployment, and the rising cost of living expenses that delay seeking a diagnosis and treatment. - TRICARE provides limited access to assisted reproduction, limiting fertility treatments like IUI and IVF for those with a service-connected infertility diagnosis, and it is only available to service members in legal, heterosexual marriages.
- TRICARE policy currently provides diagnostic services, coital reproductive support, and service-connected medical treatments leaving many military families paying for fertility treatments completely out of pocket.
- TRICARE has unevenly applied access to fertility preservation for cancer diagnosis but does not provide coverage for voluntary sperm and/or egg freezing for injury prevention or for career progression leading to delayed family building.
- The Adoption Tax Credit is one of the only resources military families can access upon the finalization of an adoption.
- Military-connected families that have adopted face obstacles in accessing family and post-adoption services.
- The 6 Military Treatment Facilities that provide access to IVF treatment limit access to PRIME members only, have extensive wait lists, and require that the military member pay upfront for this privately contracted care.
Removing Barriers for Family Building for Our Veterans
- The Veterans Health Administration is prohibited by regulation from providing IVF medical treatments through a temporary appropriation from Congress that requires annual approval, some Veterans with service-connected infertility can get limited care.
- Veterans deal with tremendous hurdles to prove their service-connected infertility and to secure proof through military documentation.
- Americans who have served our country should have access to care and coverage to build a family, especially if their fertility has been compromised by their military service.
* Source: 2021 Survey on Fertility Benefits, https://resolve.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/2021-Fertility-Survey-Report-Final.pdf