Donald Trump announces IVF drug price cuts and employer benefit push in major fertility plan

President Donald Trump on Thursday announced two new efforts to expand the availability of in vitro fertilisation, the first concrete step from his administration on the expensive and politically fraught procedure.

Mr Trump struck a deal with EMD Serono, a subsidiary of Germany’s Merck KGaA, to slash the price of some of the company’s fertility medicines in exchange for relief from planned tariffs on pharmaceuticals imported into the US, which Mr Trump has not yet imposed.

The Trump administration will also be issuing guidance encouraging employers to offer fertility benefits directly to their employees, which would work similarly to vision or dental coverage.

It will allow employers to offer add-on coverage at a fixed cost for patients and employers. But it’s unclear how much the effort will increase coverage, as it does not mandate that employers participate.

At a press conference Thursday, Mr Trump said the moves will lead to “many more beautiful American children.”

“We’ll dramatically slash the cost of IVF and the treatment and many of the most common fertility drugs for countless millions of Americans,” Trump said. “Prices are going way down, way, way down.”

EMD Serono, the largest fertility drug manufacturer in the world, said it will sell its IVF therapies directly to patients and that people will be able to buy the drugs on Mr Trump’s direct-to-consumer purchasing site, TrumpRx.gov. That site will launch in January 2026.

The medications include Gonal-f, a critical drug used in the shot protocol required for egg stimulation.

The plan comes as Mr Trump works to rein in prescription drug costs in the US, inking deals with Pfizer and AstraZeneca in recent weeks that aim to make it easier for Americans to access certain drugs.

Millions of babies have been born through IVF, which involves combining eggs and sperm in a laboratory to create an embryo for couples having difficulty conceiving. The decades-old procedure is an issue that the president repeatedly vowed to address on the campaign trail, calling himself the “father of IVF” last fall.

The procedure is often not fully covered by insurance — if at all — and it can cost around $20,000 ($A30,800) or more per cycle. Only a quarter of companies with more than 200 employees currently cover IVF. Some studies have shown that an IVF cycle in the US costs 271 per cent more than the average in 25 other countries.

Mr Trump issued an executive order on IVF shortly after the president took office, promising to lower costs and make the procedure more accessible. But that order did not provide specifics apart from promising to put out a detailed report with recommendations on the issue by late May. That report has not been released.

The procedure became a flashpoint in the nationwide clash over abortion and reproductive rights in early 2024 when Alabama’s Supreme Court said that frozen embryos are children and those who destroy them can be held liable for wrongful death.

In some cases, embryos may be discarded during IVF.

Mr Trump quickly distanced himself from that ruling last year, urging the Alabama Legislature to protect access to IVF.

Americans generally support the procedure. An April 2024 poll from Pew Research Centre found that seven in 10 US adults say IVF access is a good thing, with modest differences across most demographic and partisan groups.