Employees need more than IVF to start a family

The rise in demand for benefits that address infertility is a step in the right direction, but employers should keep in mind that they aren’t the end-all be-all of family building options.

Fertility benefits that include IVF treatments are still offered by just 19% of employers, despite growing demand by employees, according to the Society for Human Resource Management. IVF’s popularity as a benefit outshines other benefits like surrogacy and adoption support, closing the door to broader conversations around the family planning journey.

“Sometimes [what families need] is infertility support and parental leave — which a lot of companies are focused on,” says Paris Wallace, CEO of Ovia Health, a digital health platform for parents and parents-to-be. “But sometimes it's adoption and surrogacy or a variety of other things that people are trying in order to achieve a family.”

Less than half of employers offer reimbursement for adoption, according to a recent study by Willis Towers Watson. And among those who do, 4 out of 5 cap reimbursements around $5,000 per child or $10,000 lifetime limit. Surrogacy options are equally slim: only 9% of employers currently provide a surrogacy reimbursement program, with the majority implementing similar limits around $10,000 per child or $20,000 lifetime limit.

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The lack of adoption and surrogacy plans in benefit options is disproportionately affecting LGBTQ couples, according to Colin Quinn, co-founder and CEO of Included Health. In order to be eligible for fertility benefits, many health plans require a diagnosis of infertility by a medical doctor — which consists of trying for six months without success.

“That’s where we see a problem,” Quinn says. “For members of the community and same-sex couples, we don't suffer from infertility — we could, but that's not the [primary] reason that we can't get pregnant.”

Thankfully the realization is dawning on more employers, who are now pushing back against healthcare plans and fighting for all of their employees to get the right to start a family, regardless of their methods.

“The overall headline is positive — more and more companies are investing in families and making it easier to have a family journey,” Wallace says. “The realization that people are starting to make is that there's a lot of different family journeys and people need support to get there.”

Read more: Why your benefits may be failing your LGBTQ employees

For DeAnne Aussem, well-being leader at PwC, the company’s inclusion of more robust family-building options is what allowed her to start her own family, without sacrificing her finances or her peace of mind.

Since she’s been with PwC, the firm has offered both adoption and surrogacy benefits, both of which her and her wife took advantage of — with their son, her wife donated an egg and the couple used a sperm donor; Aussem carried the pregnancy to term. Eighteen months later, they adopted their daughter.

Both experiences were made easy due to their company having a broader understanding of fertility and family-building benefits, Aussem says. PwC provides up to $25,000 per child and a $75,000 lifetime maximum for the adoption benefit. As for infertility treatments — which include surrogacy — there's a lifetime maximum of $25,000 for treatments and $10,000 benefit for donor sperm.

“I was almost speechless,” she says. “It was just so amazing to have the support of my employer through those types of life experiences.”

If employees respond so positively to these broader benefit offerings, why haven’t more companies added adoption and surrogacy to the fertility benefit conversation? Because companies have yet to figure out where to allocate the funds.

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“Employers and health plans know how to pay doctors,” Wallace says. “But how do you pay an adoption agency? How do you pay a surrogate?”

To begin tackling this issue, Ovia has launched a comprehensive payment plan where they'll help the company with reimbursements and help employees pay for these services. The goal is to make reimbursing adoption and surrogacy benefits as easy as filing a medical claim, according to Wallace, which most companies are already doing on a daily basis.

“Starting a family is the most important thing that you do in your life,” Wallace says. “An employer supporting that and being part of it is just a fantastic thing to do and really sets them apart.”