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\n To hear President Donald Trump tell it, he wields an almost magical ability to lower Americans\u2019 health care costs. Yet that doesn\u2019t seem to extend to one area where he made explicit 2024 campaign promises: in vitro fertilization.\n <\/p>\n
\n Just this weekend, Trump claimed he had lowered prescription drug costs as much as 1,500%. \u201cI don\u2019t mean 50%,\u201d Trump clarified. \u201cI mean 14, 1,500%.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n This is obviously false and innumerate. You can\u2019t cut something more than 100%. It would mean drug companies were not only giving their drugs away for free, but actually paying people exorbitant sums to take them.\n <\/p>\n
\n But the self-proclaimed \u201cfather of IVF<\/a>\u201d appears to be an absentee dad.\n <\/p>\n \n His past vows to make the expensive and arduous IVF process \u201cfree,\u201d or at least require insurers to cover it, would fall under that seemingly magical umbrella as well, of course. But contrasting with his repeated pressure on drugmakers to lower costs \u2014 regardless of whether it\u2019s in his power to do so \u2014 Trump and his administration haven\u2019t done much of anything to make his IVF promises a reality. And it sounds like they\u2019ve given up trying, to the extent they meant to pursue this policy in the first place.\n <\/p>\n \n Indeed, this looked a whole lot like a cynical pander during the 2024 campaign. And the administration\u2019s actions since then only seem to confirm it.\n <\/p>\n \n The Washington Post reported this weekend that the Trump administration has no actual plan to get insurers to cover IVF, more than six months into the new administration. The only concrete action Trump has taken on this front was back in February, when Trump instructed his domestic policy council to submit \u201crecommendations\u201d on \u201caggressively reducing out-of-pocket and health plan costs for IVF treatment.\u201d He gave it 90 days.\n <\/p>\n \n Those recommendations were due in mid-May. But there is still no word on what, if any, recommendations were produced, and the administration last week reportedly declined to comment on the situation<\/a>.\n <\/p>\n \n Fast forward to today, and the White House is apparently waving the white flag on Trump\u2019s biggest IVF promise. White House officials reportedly blamed inaction on the fact that Trump can\u2019t legally do this on his own and would need Congress to pass a law.\n <\/p>\n \n But that\u2019s not exactly the kind of impediment that Trump usually respects. His first six-plus months back in the presidency are rife with attempts to take bold and legally dubious executive actions that challenge the courts to stop him and companies to defy him. That\u2019s even applied to health care specifically.\n <\/p>\n \n Just last week, Trump sent letters to 17 major pharmaceutical company CEOs giving them 60 days to comply<\/a> with an executive order that sought to lower prescription drug prices \u2014 even as experts say he has no such authority.\n <\/p>\n \n Trump has also sought to squeeze drugmakers in other ways, including threatening tariffs on pharmaceutical imports<\/a>.\n <\/p>\n \n But the White House hasn\u2019t engaged in those hardball tactics to make insurers cover IVF. Administration officials aren\u2019t putting any public pressure on Congress to pass the law it says it needs, either, and they don\u2019t even seem to want to talk about the situation.\n <\/p>\n \n And if that\u2019s the new reality, it was entirely predictable \u2014 and predicted.\n <\/p>\n \n It was almost exactly a year ago when Trump debuted this promise.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cThe government is going to pay for [IVF], or we\u2019re going to get \u2014 we\u2019ll mandate your insurance company to pay for it, which is going to be great. We\u2019re going to do that,\u201d Trump said in August 2024. \u201cWe want to produce babies in this country, right?\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n That\u2019s not a \u201cwe\u2019ll try to make this happen\u201d promise. That\u2019s a \u201cwe\u2019re going to make this happen\u201d promise.\n <\/p>\n \n By October, Trump had declared himself the \u201cfather of IVF\u201d (something his campaign later labeled a joke). And Vice President JD Vance at his 2024 debate declared that making IVF more \u201caccessible\u201d was core to the GOP\u2019s health agenda.\n <\/p>\n \n Even at the time, though, many dismissed the promises as hot air. Trump and his campaign were dealing with political fallout from strict red-state abortion bans, some of which had imperiled IVF access and coverage. Rhetorically bear-hugging IVF, a practice that\u2019s widely popular with voters, made sense.\n <\/p>\n \n But free IVF or ubiquitous insurance coverage never seemed an especially serious idea. Not only are IVF costs very expensive, stretching into tens of thousands of dollars per treatment, but many anti-abortion conservatives are starkly opposed to it. The process involves producing embryos that are never used and are often destroyed, creating a moral quandary for anti-abortion blocs that believe life begins at conception.\n <\/p>\n \n The idea that a Republican administration would spearhead making that cheaper \u2014 or even making the government pay for the creation of later-discarded embryos \u2014 was always far-fetched.\n <\/p>\n \n Because of all of this, many Republican lawmakers strongly rejected Trump\u2019s proposal<\/a> when he debuted it. Some even acknowledged that it appeared to be a rather transparent bit of pandering that was not to be taken seriously.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cPeople get emotional about an issue, so they decide to completely pander and go way over a position they never really supported because they\u2019re afraid people accuse them,\u201d Conservative Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky said at the time<\/a>.\n <\/p>\n \n It appears that\u2019s precisely what happened here.\n <\/p>\n \n That\u2019s bad news for anybody who might have been counting on this proposal. These issues, after all, deal with one of the most heart-wrenching circumstances that many families will ever confront: problems conceiving children. The cost is prohibitive for many people.\n <\/p>\n![\"Medications](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/c-gettyimages-2214163374.jpg\")
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