A new proposal from the Trump administration is encouraging companies to offer fertility treatment benefits by making it easier for them to offer those treatments as stand-alone coverage.
The new rule released May 10 from the U.S. departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Treasury would create an excepted insurance benefit — in the same category as dental and vision benefit coverage — for treating infertility. That means they would be exempt from requirements under laws like the Affordable Care Act.
The rule would set a combined lifetime maximum cap of $120,000 for participants and their beneficiaries, and this amount would be indexed for inflation from 2028 onward. All of the benefits must be for diagnosis, mitigation, or treatment of infertility or related reproductive health conditions, the proposed rule said.
The proposal aims to address “employers’ sparse coverage of fertility-related treatments for the American worker and increase benefit options by easing statutory and regulatory burdens to make IVF [in vitro fertilization] and other fertility treatments more affordable,” the Trump administration said in a news release. “Though most workers of reproductive age receive health care coverage through their jobs, the majority do not have robust fertility coverage.”
The rule is a follow-up to the administration’s October 2025 guidance that permitted employers to offer stand-alone fertility treatment benefits. At the time, the administration posted a new set of fertility benefits insurance guidance, saying that the ability to offer stand-alone fertility benefits represents “a massive opportunity to expand access to IVF coverage.”
Last fall, Dr. Roger Shedlin, founder and CEO of WIN, a family-building and fertility benefits company in Greenwich, Conn., said the administration’s moves to encourage employers to offer more fertility options is a “step in the right direction for both employers and employees.”
“Cost remains one of the biggest barriers to fertility care, preventing many intended parents from moving forward. Reducing these costs can have a significant impact on affordability and access,” he said. Those changes can help even small businesses “across the widest range of industries be able to provide family-building and fertility coverage for their employees.”
Although not widespread, a growing number of companies are offering fertility benefits as employers look to offer inclusive family-building support for a competitive edge. An equal percentage of employers (24%) offer IVF coverage and infertility treatment coverage (other than IVF), according to the SHRM 2025 Employee Benefits Survey.
Other data points to higher numbers for fertility benefits. A fall 2024 report from the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans (IFEBP) found that 42% of U.S. employers offer fertility benefits — up from 40% in 2022 and 30% in 2020. Overall, those employers offer every type of fertility benefit IFEBP collected data on — including fertility medications, IVF, and genetic testing. The availability of egg harvesting/freezing services as a fertility benefit has jumped considerably over the past eight years, with 16% of employers now offering the benefit, up from just 2% in 2016.
Comments about the proposal are due no later than July 13.
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