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Join RESOLVE’s leadership team for an in-depth look at what it takes to pass pro-family legislation, protect IVF, and what we’re up against.
HOSTS
President & CEO, Barb Collura
Chief Engagement Officer, Betsy Campbell
Chief External Affairs Officer, Rebecca Flick
ABOUT RESOLVE
RESOLVE: The National Infertility Association is the largest non-profit patient advocacy organization in the country focusing on increasing access to all family building options through insurance coverage and policy changes as well as protecting fertility care like IVF from legislation.
Hello, and welcome to Infertility Discourse brought to you by Resolve, the National Infertility Association. I'm Rebecca Flick, and here with me today is Barb Kalora.
Barb Collura:Hi. It's Barb. Good morning.
Rebecca Flick:And we are missing, our 3rd in our little trio, Betsy Campbell. What's Betsy doing today, Barb?
Barb Collura:Well, we are, very excited about an IVF insurance bill that, has passed the state legislature in California, and it's on, Governor Gavin Newsom's desk for signing. He has until the end of September, to to sign that into law and so she has been, very busy. She just came back from vacation, very busy working with our advocates in California and our partners and making sure we're doing everything we can to ensure that governor Newsom signs that into law.
Rebecca Flick:That's awesome. And so we had a little bit of conflict with Betsy's schedule, but she will be back with us for the next episode. No doubt. Yeah. So we have been dealing with a lot this month already.
Rebecca Flick:It's we're recording this on September 5th. It'll be released on September 10th, and it's been a very, very busy couple weeks since our last podcast. Besides California, obviously, hoping, really, every body part crossed that this does get signed into law, we've also been focused on a lot of breaking news lately.
Barb Collura:What's been going on? I thought you were gonna talk about the fact that I was on vacation, and that's why you were so busy because Betsy and I were both off vacation, at the same time. And I got to go to the Minnesota State Fair, which was a very big deal. And I got to see, one of our advocates at the Minnesota State Fair, Julie Berman from Minnesota. So it was an it was really fun.
Barb Collura:But, while I was gallivanting around Northern Minnesota, what were you doing, Rebecca?
Rebecca Flick:Well, to speak on Minnesota, I watched our advocates on social media just bouncing around the Minnesota State Fair talking to every lawmaker they met
Barb Collura:Oh my gosh.
Rebecca Flick:And talking about, the Minnesota infertility IVF coverage bill. So
Barb Collura:Well, I have to say when I saw Julie, and I'm still gonna post this, I have a great photo of she and I. She's wearing her Minnesota family built passive Minnesota Family Building Act T shirt to the Minnesota State Fair. Okay. Are you kidding me? And she was busy because she was tracking down a lawmaker in, you know, the education hall and, while I was eating my pickle pizza.
Barb Collura:So, you know, she was she was on it.
Rebecca Flick:Our volunteers are amazing, and, everyone in California and everyone in Minnesota, the work just feels nonstop. So thank you to all of those advocates. And, yes, well, Betsy and Barb, were enjoying their pretty disconnected vacation, I will say. I was very proud of you, Barb.
Rebecca Flick:You were not very connected while you're on PTO, besides California. We were also reacting to IVF and all the discussion happening at the national level, with presidential campaigns. One particular note was, or two notes, actually. There was a lot of talk about infertility and IVF at the Democratic National Convention. And, also former president, Trump made a campaign announcements, I guess, or answered a question on an interview, talking about his plans for IVF access, the government and or insurance companies paying for it.
Rebecca Flick:So we definitely needed to react to that. And, you know, I I think it's it's an interesting spot to be in. We want our issues to have this much attention on them, but we also are really in the middle, and that is the name of today's episode for our nineties music fans, our Jimmy Eats World fans. Today's episode is titled The Middle, and we'll be adding that song to our Spotify Spotify playlist, so check that out. And we really are in the middle.
Rebecca Flick:And why is that, Barb? Why is being a 501c3 really, really putting us in the middle when it comes to bipartisan politics?
Barb Collura:Well, I just I have to kinda back up because this is so interesting. When I was out walking this morning when my podcast when my daily podcast finished, I realized I hadn't listened to our podcast episode 4. And I know that sounds funny that I listen to our podcast, but I have to remind myself too what we what we talked about. But I you know, when you're when you're listening to it after the fact, I I pick up things. And I had actually forgotten that we talked about the fact that resolve is a 501c3 as is ASRM and what that means.
Barb Collura:And so that whatever. That came out a couple weeks ago. And then why this is relevant today, why we're talking about this today is because when former president Trump came out with with his announcement and it was while I was on vacation, so it was a week ago, we started you know, we got some feedback from our community and some people were like, you're gonna call him out. Right? This is just, this is this or that.
Barb Collura:Other people were like, this is amazing. I hope you're now gonna endorse Trump. And other people were like, why haven't you endorsed the Harris Walls campaign? And and you and I were getting the these comments, from our community. And one of the things that one of the features of this podcast that we, share with you are ways that RESOLVE learns to get smarter.
Barb Collura:It's a phrase that we kind of have a joke about in the office. But it's it's opportunities where we say, you know what? We got that wrong or we're gonna do something different. And hey, we reserve the right to get smarter. And it's sort of a funny way of saying, you know, we can do things differently and we can learn and grow.
Barb Collura:And I have to say that when I started getting that feedback from people about why haven't we endorsed this person or that person, it, it made me realize that we need to do a better job, Rebecca, of talking about what we can and can't do. You know, we are so out there advocating that we haven't really shared with people. Oh, by the way, there's some things that we can't do. And and so I take that on me personally that we haven't done a good enough job of sharing what we can and can't do because if we had done that nobody would even be asking us to endorse anyone. And here's why, we can't.
Barb Collura:As a 501c3, the IRS has specifically prevented 501c3 organizations from getting involved in campaigns and candidates and elections. We can talk about voters and go going and voting. We can provide voter education that has to be done in a very specific way, but we cannot endorse candidates at all. I can't get involved in any campaign. I can't, we can't give money.
Barb Collura:We can't say we love we can't say vote for this person. We absolutely cannot do that. We would be shut down by the IRS. So while I I, while we advocate for issues and we can advocate for bills. Right?
Barb Collura:This is what we do, Rebecca. We advocate for issues and we advocate for specific bills. We cannot, get involved in campaigns. And it's it's so interesting because people are like, why are you guys out there more right now? This is like what everybody's talking about.
Barb Collura:Why aren't you endorsing this or that candidate? We can't.
Rebecca Flick:Right. So I'll talk a little bit about how we did react to last week's news. We acknowledged that a presidential candidate talked about IVF access, and, we said we're open to seeing what the policy actually is. So campaign talking points, whether it's at a convention or in an interview, they're talking points, and we really cannot react to anything until it's a laid out plan and we understand how it impacts our community, whether, it meets our standards because we do have standards when it comes to policy and legislation for our community, and, you know, how it's going to be enacted, whether it's through an executive order or a policy change or a piece of legislation that becomes law. So what we did too is take we took the opportunity to educate our community and the media. Barb was on CNN, regarding this, and we had some pickup in some printed news outlets.
Rebecca Flick:There are actually ways that congress can help our community right now. There are bills, live active bills, that we are working on and have given input on that we support. So, again, we're supporting policy and legislation. We're not supporting candidates or platforms. And so, we wanted to get the word out, and so that's what this podcast is gonna focus on.
Rebecca Flick:We wanna talk about bills in congress right now that address our issues and whether or not we support them. Because guess what? There are actually a lot of bills that we do support, and there are many bills that we oppose and don't support. And we're gonna talk about why.
Barb Collura:Yeah. And can I just say what, what Trump said, what this is what I heard I heard him say we want the government to provide IVF coverage and, or have your have private insurance mandated. And what was so interesting to me is we actually have bills in Congress that do just that that we've been supporting. Some we've been supporting for, like, a decade.
Barb Collura:And so, people say, well, what do you all think about that? And I'm like, bring it on. We we actually are, you know, supporting bills that do just that. So, that's the kind of policy that we would love to see, but I have no details. I want people to hear me loud and clear.
Barb Collura:We've had people reach out to us and say, do you know how many IVF cycles it will cut? We have nothing.
Rebecca Flick:Yes. Or how much do it cost the government? There's no
Barb Collura:We have not talked to either campaign or either candidate about specific legislation or our issues in terms of what we want or what we don't want. I wanna be very clear on that. That is, we don't we know as much as all of you. So I I don't have any other insights. But if if you're thinking about the broad picture of that, good news is we already support though that and and there are bills in Congress.
Barb Collura:So let's talk about break this down in a couple categories, Rebecca. And then, so there's bills in Congress that we support. We have, on many of these, we've actually worked with the lawmakers, when they were drafting the legislation. Betsy, you you know, she talks a lot about state advocacy. Our state advocacy experience in bill drafting is a little bit different because we have model legislation that, is written like a like a law.
Barb Collura:Right. Like a bill. Right? It's not just like Control this, do that.
Rebecca Flick:Copy, control, paste. You know?
Rebecca Flick:Literally, like, it re written in in a very, very specific way, and Betsy gives that to lawmakers because we oftentimes have people who talk to their state lawmaker advocates and their lawmakers like, I would love to introduce IVF insurance. Can you help me? And we're like, as a matter of fact, you know, and like you just said, they cut and paste. And they they, so in that case, a lot and that's very common in our country. They're every issue, every cause imaginable, there's model legislation that some expert or group has done.
Barb Collura:So we are no different. So so that's, that's the situation there. At the federal level, it's a little bit different in that, a lot of the legislation typically bill drafting starts with the staff, and the lawmakers, and they're they're fitting this into some existing code or whatever. And then they will draft something or they'll come to us and they'll say, what's the definition of infertility or how do you know, what's the right number of IVF cycles or that kind of thing. And so, Rebecca, we are constantly, reviewing draft bill language.
Rebecca Flick:Yep.
Barb Collura:I've been doing that for years. And, you know, we'll we'll offer feedback, and sometimes it's taken, sometimes it's not. The Tammy Duckworth, bill, the access to family building act, the bill that would protect access. I mean, that her staff got input from oh my gosh.
Barb Collura:I would say at least over 20 organizations on, on that bill and and the drafting of it. So it's very, very common, for for for lawmakers to do that.
Rebecca Flick:So and that bill is actually not active right now because
Barb Collura:No. I I wouldn't say that. It's still in the house. It's still in the senate. It still exists.
Barb Collura:The one in the the one the one in the you're you're talking about the senate bill because it got Yep. It got, combined and turned into the right to IVF act, and it was up for a vote. And that's the the one that, it was up for a vote in June that did not pass. Right. So, the bill is still very active in the in the house.
Barb Collura:So we have bills in congress that, as we said, protect access to IVF. We also have bills in congress that, mandate insurance coverage for our military, which does not have access to IVF right now, are very, very, very limited. Our veterans, the access to IVF is very, very, very limited. We have a bill that's mandating the federal employee health benefits plan to mandate IVF. So those bills are in both the house and the senate.
Barb Collura:And, again, they would cover IVF as health care for our veterans, for military, federal employees. We also there's a bill that has been introduced for at least, oh my gosh, probably 10 years now, and it is a very broad insurance bill. Rosa DeLauro in this in the house, has introduced it, and, Cory Booker senator Cory Booker in the senate has introduced it. And it's a very big bill that includes a lot of things that I just said as well as private insurance. Then over the summer, we've worked very hard on a bill called the Hope Act.
Barb Collura:And, this is a bill that, interestingly enough is focused on self insured. Actually, it's it's focused on private insurance. Both fully insurance and, fully fully insured and self insured. And so when you think about what, former president Trump said, the HOPE Act does basically what what he just said. It it mandates that private insurance cover IVF.
Barb Collura:And this is this has been introduced in this in the house only and it's bipartisan.
Rebecca Flick:Right.
Barb Collura:You heard me. It's bipartisan.
Rebecca Flick:That means the co authors or there's 3 authors on this bill.
Barb Collura:Well, there's 4, but 4.
Rebecca Flick:They are representative of the Republican party and the Democrat party.
Barb Collura:Yeah. And I looked yesterday, this bill as of, September 4th, it had 20 cosponsors and I think 14 were Republican and 6 were Democrat. And so, we're working on getting more Democrats on. We're working on increasing that number of 20 to even higher and this is a really good bill. This is a bill that ASRM and Resolve worked on behind the scenes for, oh my gosh, the last 18 months.
Barb Collura:And it was really authored by some health policy experts in the senate. And and and and we we feel it's a it's a really good bill, bipartisan, as I said. So what have I just said? I've just said we have bills that cover all private insurance provided by employers and all the health insurance, the big health insurance provided by our government. I did not cover Medicaid and Medicare.
Barb Collura:We do support a bill called the Comprehensive Cancer Survivorship Act. It mandates that Medicaid cover fertility preservation. And we also support bills that do things like, uterine increase, research for uterine fibroids. We wanna see PCOS awareness month recognized by by our federal government. And we also wanna see people receive days off for things like a miscarriage or a stillbirth, which right now don't a lot of a lot of companies don't think of that as, you know, they'll give you maternity leave, but they won't give you leave for things like that.
Barb Collura:So and and we've been supporting, an adoption tax credit bill for many, many, many years. And so those are the kinds of issues, Rebecca, that are right now in Congress. So if lawmakers say, candidates, anybody say, hey. Hey. I support IVF and they're waving a banner that says I support IVF.
Barb Collura:Look and see if they're on these bills and what they're doing to advance this legislation. How would someone do that? Okay. Well, first of all, you can look up you can go to our website, resolve.org. We have all of these bills listed.
Barb Collura:We have an awesome bill tracking. In fact, we get compliments on this all the time from the media and lawmakers. They're like, oh my god. You know, you have everything on here. All these bills are on our website.
Barb Collura:You just filter by federal government and then you can you can look up all of these bills. Then there are multiple free services out there. You can just Google it and find out who the cosponsors are of those bills and see if your lawmaker's on there. You're gonna have to know who your lawmaker is, and then you're gonna have to see, oh, look, they're on it. And, and that's that's a really good thing.
Barb Collura:We also have a list of bills that are in Congress, Rebecca, but we don't necessarily support. And this is important for us. We do this at the state level too. We kinda like we kinda like are the clearing house. We put it all out there, and then we can tell you, do we support it?
Barb Collura:Do we oppose it? Or are we neutral? Or is it under review? So we wanna be sure that we have a comprehensive listing, and you're gonna find some bills quite honestly that were introduced this year. A lot of them were introduced in the wake of all the Alabama, activity.
Barb Collura:And you saw a lot of members of Congress say, I support IVF. And then they needed to introduce legislation, to back that up. And we're super excited when people do that. And then what we do is we read the bills. And we read the legislation.
Barb Collura:And I have to say, a lot of them, we do not support. Sadly, none of these lawmakers called us, before they introduced these bills. So I can't say that I read these before they were introduced or I had any opportunity to talk to the staff. But a lot of these bills have, real problems. And so we are not, we're not supporting.
Barb Collura:There's a there's a few we are looking at more closely, but, the majority of them, we are not supporting.
Rebecca Flick:And this is, my got smarter moment because as all of these things were coming up and they were getting maybe press attention, media attention, or our community was like, but what about this bill? And you only cover bills that are introduced by a certain political party, which is not true. We only talk about at the time, we were only talking about bills that we supported. So I said, let's get up on our website the bills that we don't support because I think it's only fair that our community understands that there are bills in congress that we don't support and why we don't support them, and it's because we we want legislation that's going to really impact your life, and truly make a difference. And so let's let's
Barb Collura:Well, I have to say it it's it's it's a lot of things.
Barb Collura:It's it's, you know, what's the definition of infertility? What what is in here that might harm our community? I, we have a rule that resolve when we look at legislation, do no harm. And we don't wanna harm anyone. And we also don't wanna set up a precedent that makes it very very difficult into the future to try and undo.
Barb Collura:I cannot tell you how frustrating it is to be faced with a a situation of a of a law that was passed prior to us that harms our community, and we have to undo it. It's hard. And so Betsy and I and our team have been very, very careful to do no harm into the future. I don't want somebody 20 years from now go, oh, my God. What it why did resolve support that piece of legislation?
Barb Collura:It's been so harmful. So those are the kinds of things that we look at. I don't know if you wanna go into some of the detail, but, you know, there was a bill that was introduced that got a lot of attention and it was kind of an IVF protection bill. And that's how it was built. That's how it was promoted.
Barb Collura:And, and it was it doesn't actually protect IVF. All it does is say if a state passes a law that prohibits IVF, We've yet to see anybody prohibit IVF. We we're gonna shut off your Medicaid funding.
Rebecca Flick:Not we RESOLVE, but the government.
Rebecca Flick:The government. Right? So the bill was like, if you do this, there's a penalty. So it's a it's a it you know, there's the carrot and stick. It's a stick. It just says if you do something, you're gonna get penalized.
Barb Collura:That doesn't actually protect IVF today. Not only that, but we are more, quite honestly, more concerned about bills that are going to regulate and and chip away at accessing IVF versus all out prohibiting IVF. And and this bill still left open the possibility of states to do that. And why why were we mixing IVF protection with Medicaid? It didn't make any sense.
Barb Collura:And, why why harm vulnerable populations?
Rebecca Flick:Yeah.
Barb Collura:I mean, it just the whole thing just didn't didn't make any sense. We need to see a bill that actually helps today protect IVF. There was another bill that on the surface looked like it was about, public awareness and diagnosis and maybe even, you know, expanding research and funding and so forth.
Barb Collura:And what was really interesting about this is that it used a term, and I love it when this happens in a bill. I don't. This is I'm being facetious here. They they came up with a new term. And I remember about a couple days before this bill was introduced, which I knew nothing about, I had a media question.
Barb Collura:And it was they said, what is restorative reproductive medicine? And I said, I have no idea. I went to a few doctors on our board. I went to some experts, as well and some policy people. And everyone's like, I have no idea what you're talking about.
Barb Collura:This was not a term that anybody in our field, any doctor, any scientist had ever heard of. So it was made up by I don't know who, but it would showed up in this particular bill. And it's all about advancing restorative reproductive medicine. So I tried to figure out what that was and see if there was a definition. And it it seems to me that it was pointing to specific therapies that are faith based and that are non scientific, you know, have not been peer reviewed or anything like that.
Barb Collura:So this was a bill advancing something that nobody knows about and that is not really based on science. That that's not a bill that we're gonna promote. There was another bill that that was just about, it's it was sounded good. It was a resolution, you know, about advancing IVF, and it had some language in there that was very contradictory to advancing the goals that we believe in. And so, I worry I worry about leaving that this leaves the door open to some other things.
Barb Collura:So that's the level of detail we get into. Another one very similar to the carrot and stick that I was talking about earlier with the Medicaid. This was if you, you know, if you try and pass, a law that prohibits IVF. Actually, this was about health care providers. This was going to be if if you pass a law that prohibits a physician from doing IVF, you're gonna get all your maternal and child health block grants funding cut off.
Barb Collura:Again, not really sure what that has to do with. It also had this really interesting definition and it I've never seen this before, Rebecca. It was, performing IVF for an individual experiencing quote medical hardship in conceiving a child. I don't know what that is.
Rebecca Flick:Infertility.
Barb Collura:So this is the kind of this is the kind of stuff and I'm not trying to be jokey here, but this is real legislation and we take this very seriously at resolve. I know ASRM does as well. We look at every word. We look at every way it's it's phrased. We look for those potential loopholes and and and and we make a decision.
Barb Collura:Doesn't matter who introduced it. I'm not looking at the the people, the legislators, but I'm looking at the words on the paper and that's what dictates what we what we do. So that's our that's our take on go to our website. Check out all this federal legislation. You can, let your lawmakers know to support our bills that we're supporting.
Barb Collura:We would love that.
Rebecca Flick:I mean, the good news is when you look at the list, there's a lot more that we support. So there's a lot of good legislation and ways Congress can help.
Barb Collura:I just was counting. My pause there was, I think there's, like I think I counted 13 or 14 bills right now Yep. In Congress that we support no shortage of ways that Congress can show their, as they say, support for IVF.
Rebecca Flick:Well, we have the rest of this calendar year to convince Congress that there are ways that they can help now. We do not have to wait for a new administration. In fact, that's gonna get a lot harder when, you know, it takes a while for a new administration to come in and and new members of Congress that are voted in to set their priorities for the year, and this is a really transformative moment right now where congress can do things that can help.
Barb Collura:Yep. Yep. Make it happen. Make it happen. And we have another exciting thing I wanna share.
Barb Collura:It's our 50th anniversary. And when this podcast comes out, we are gonna have ways, for people to support RESOLVE not just through, you know, contacting their lawmaker, but, but we have ways that you can donate to resolve, calling it a tribute wall. It's gonna be really, really cool. And we also have ways through setting up your own fundraising page and inviting your friends and family to donate to resolve, maybe in your honor. It's a really cool platform.
Barb Collura:You get to post photos. You can tell your story. Storytelling, as you know, Rebecca, is so important. And what a cool way for people to learn about resolve and, and and your connection to them. So for our listeners, I encourage you to go to resolve.org.
Barb Collura:You're gonna see links, to our 50th anniversary fundraising efforts, and I hope that, you will decide to get involved. And let your, network, your friends and family, if you're professional, let your colleagues know they can, support RESOLVE financially and really ensure that we can meet all of all of these demands. Gosh. You just talked about a new administration. You talked about things that are gonna happen in 2025.
Barb Collura:We need the resources to meet those needs.
Rebecca Flick:Yeah. We we are really concerned. This is our fight for families campaign. You know, the tagline of this podcast is because what's at stake is all about family, and, we really believe that there are about 16 states we're really concerned about, as we head into next year's state legislative activity, and we need to be ready. We need to be ready at the ground level with legislative action.
Rebecca Flick:We need to be out there educating people, through the media, and that's how we will keep IVF access safe and available. And, you know, Fight for Families means a lot to us. I do wanna take this moment to thank Barb and Chris Collura. Chris is Barb's husband, and, I am grateful to get to call them friends and family, after all these years of knowing them. And they made a, very generous donation to resolve, a $20,000 matching donation, which means for every person that either raises or donates a $100 or more, Barb and Chris will match that up to $20,000.
Rebecca Flick:So I really hope you take this match to heart. We are so grateful for that, Barb and and Chris. Thank you.
Barb Collura:Well, I you are very welcome. It's our honor and pleasure. It's, you know, I've been here for 20 years, so there's there's a little bit of magic to that number. But I, resolve means so much to us and how we built our family and the relationships that I've made over the years. And it's just quite honestly a small way of giving back.
Barb Collura:So if it motivates people, hallelujah.
Rebecca Flick:Yes. We hope so. Well, thanks for listening. We'll be back in a couple weeks with a new episode. I will have survived a presidential debate, listening for our issues to be discussed.
Rebecca Flick:But please, you know, follow us on social media and visit our website for the latest updates. Thanks for listening.
Barb Collura:Thank you.