President Trump announced a new deal that aims to give women better access to fertility treatment — including in vitro fertilization.
“We want to make it easier for all couples to have babies, raise children, and start the families they've always dreamed about” the President said while making the announcement Thursday.
The White House says the deal will make fertility care more affordable and accessible, by allowing supplemental insurance plans specifically for fertility and allowing specialized companies to bid down the cost of the treatments for employers.
According to Senior Administration officials granted anonymity to discuss details of the announcement, depending on the type of treatment and where patients are on the federal poverty level they could see significant discounts for treatment.
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The costs for follicle-stimulating hormone cycle could be “$3000 or $3,400 today,” according to one Senior Administration official, but with reduced drug pricing “would fall to $1,200 or $1,900 respectively, resulting in either a 71% or 44% reduction in costs today available again in the cash price.”
Senior Administration officials expect fertility drugs will be available for patients by early 2026 through TrumpRX — the president’s planned direct-to-consumer drug website.
According to EMD Serono, “the deal will offer direct-to-consumer sales of its portfolio of IVF therapies including Gonalf, Ovidrel, and Cetrotide to eligible patients with prescriptions at significantly reduced prices.” The company adds “when all three therapies are used in a typical IVF protocol, patients will access an 84% discount off list prices.”
During the press conference in the Oval Office, the President added that EMD Serono will also bring some drug manufacturing back to America.
“So they're going to bring it largely back into the United States," he said. "And that's for a lot of reasons, but primarily because of the election result, November 5, and maybe most importantly, because of the tariffs, because if they do it here, there are no tariffs."
“We have a strong presence in the U.S. across all three of our business sectors, with a significant number of our employees based in this key market, and look forward to growing our footprint here even further with future fertility manufacturing” said Belén Garijo, EMD Serono’s Executive Board Chair and CEO of the company’s parent organization Merk KGaA.
The declaration from the White House and EMD Serono also comes as the Food and Drug Administration awarded its first recipients of Commissioner’s National Priority Voucher (CNPV) pilot program, an effort to that the administration to address a major national priority, such as meeting a large unmet medical need, reducing downstream health care utilization, addressing a public health crisis, boosting domestic manufacturing, or increasing medication affordability with Most Favored Nation pricing. The fertility drug Pergoveris was one of the drugs awarded during the program.
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“Additionally, there are drugs that are approved for fertility treatment outside of the United States that both this company and others intend to bring to market, and we have worked closely with our colleagues at FDA on ways that we might accelerate approvals once the safety and efficacy of those drugs are verified, that in turn, will further reduce the expense of drug costs for an IVF cycle, all of this is intended to increase affordability, so that families who want to have more babies are able to have them” President Trump said during the announcement.
The move comes as President Trump looks to expand his Make America Healthy Again agenda and as he looks to capitalize on a promise from the 2024 campaign trail. While running for office last year, then GOP-nominee Trump said multiple times that he would champion IVF access and “mandating” that insurance companies pay for the costs.
The deal also comes amid the government shutdown in which healthcare has been a sticking point for Americans.
The President attacked Democrats for failing to address the issue of fertility saying, “I see the Democrats like to take credit for all of this things we do. We do the things that they take the credit. But I figure if you do enough of these, eventually people are going to figure it out. The Democrats have done nothing. This will make all fertility care, including IVF, far more affordable and accessible, and by providing coverage at every step of the way.”
"It’s clear that Donald Trump lied when he told the American people he’d make IVF available to every family for free," a statement from the office of Sen. Elizabeth Warren contended. "Instead, Trump’s new genius plan is to rip away Americans’ health insurance and gut the CDC’s IVF team, then politely ask companies to add IVF coverage out of the goodness of their own hearts — with zero federal investment and no requirement for them to follow through. It’s insulting, and yet another one of Trump’s broken promises to American families.”
