Senate votes against bringing fertility treatment bill to floor
Sen. Duckworth's bill, Right to IVF Act, would require any group health plan that covered obstetrical services to cover in-vitro fertilization.
Members of the Senate voted 48-47 Thursday to block a motion to let S. 4445, the Right to IVF Act bill, come up on the Senate floor for debate.
Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., who used IVF to have her two daughters, introduced the bill, attracted 46 Democratic and independent co-sponsors and spoke in support of a cloture motion for the bill on the Senate floor today.
She needed 60 votes in support of cloture to move S. 4445 to the floor without the risk of a filibuster, or endless round of debate.
She denounced Republican senators for opposing the bill. “All they care about is kissing up to Trump and bowing down to the most extreme wing of their party,” she said.
The bill would create a fertility treatment benefits mandate for individual health insurers and employer-sponsored group health plans.
For employer plans, the bill would add the mandate to the Employee Retirement Income Security Act.
An insurer or employer-sponsored health plan would have to cover efforts to save eggs, genetic testing of embryos, medications, in-vitro fertilization procedures and other forms of assisted reproductive technology.
The mandate would apply to any employer-sponsored health plan that covered obstetrical care.
All Democrats in the Senate other than Sen. Joe Manchin have signed on as co-sponsors. All Democrats who participated in the vote, including Manchin, voted for cloture.
Additional votes in support of cloture came from Sen. Angus King, an independent from Maine who caucuses with the Democrats; Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine; and Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska.
One Republican two Democrats and two independents who caucus with the Democrats, Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, did not vote.
The White House has supported the bill.
Republicans have developed an alternative to S. 4445, the IVF Protection Act bill. Democrats blocked passage of that bill Wednesday.
Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., a medical doctor, said on the Senate floor that the Democrats were trivializing the IVF access issue for political purposes.
“Republicans in the Senate support IVF,” Cassidy said.
Cassidy acknowledged that a court decision in Alabama temporarily disrupted access to IVF but that the state quickly restored access.
Related: The status of IVF in Alabama after state Supreme Court decision
S. 4445 has not been through the regular legislative committee process, would be far too expensive if it were passed and implemented as is, and is not serious legislation, Cassidy said.
“This is a show vote,” Cassidy said.