Former President Donald Trump recently said his administration would “pay for” in vitro fertilization treatments or force insurance companies to cover them.
“We need great children,” he said. “Beautiful children in our country, we actually need them.”
That is certainly true. But socializing coverage of IVF, or mandating that insurance pays for it, draws from the same Democratic playbook that has caused the cost of health coverage to surge.
When government forces insurers to cover additional benefits, insurers inevitably pass along the cost of doing so in the form of higher premiums and deductibles across the board.
And insurers would incur astronomical expenses. One IVF treatment cycle can cost on the order of $15,000 to $30,000.
Health clinics performed over 380,000 IVF cycles in 2022, according to the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology. No matter how you do the math, that’s a hefty bill.
Trump’s plan is also likely to encourage couples to get additional IVF treatments. On average, women take 2.5 cycles to become pregnant through IVF. Many have to cover that cost out of pocket. If they were suddenly relieved of that responsibility, they may well go through more cycles, even if the odds of success are slim or the risk of complications is high.
Additional IVF treatments mean additional expenses for insurers and higher premiums and deductibles for everyone else in the insurance pool.
Such a scenario isn’t a hypothetical. It’s the story of President Barack Obama‘s Affordable Care Act.
Since 2014, insurance companies have had to cover 10 essential health benefits, including everything from maternity care to drug addiction services, regardless of whether a beneficiary wants or needs that coverage.
Each essential health benefit means more in potential claims costs for an insurer. Insurers have responded by raising premiums and deductibles. In 2013, the year before Obamacare took effect, individuals paid an average of $244 for health insurance. Now, a mid-level benchmark plan costs an average of $477 a month, roughly what the average family pays for groceries.
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Meanwhile, deductibles for a mid-level silver plan have more than doubled from $2,400 in 2014 to over $5,200 in 2024.
Given those cost increases, mandating yet another health benefit would be foolhardy. If Trump wants to support families, he should reduce what they have to pay for health coverage by relaxing Obamacare’s cost-inflating regulations, not enacting more of them.
Sally C. Pipes is president, CEO, and Thomas W. Smith fellow in healthcare policy at the Pacific Research Institute. Her latest book is False Premise, False Promise: The Disastrous Reality of Medicare for All (Encounter 2020). Follow her on X, @sallypipes.