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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.
Hi, welcome to Infertility Discourse, a podcast from RESOLVE, the National Infertility Association. I'm your host, Rebecca Flick. And with me is cohost...
Alise Powell:Hi, everyone. It's Alise Powell, director of government affairs at RESOLVE.
Rebecca Flick:And we have a special guest with us because we have one of our amazing colleagues with us who's gonna talk about some important work that she does. Special guest, introduce yourself.
Sylvia Dao:Hi. I'm Sylvia Dao. I'm Access to Care Manager at RESOLVE, and I oversee the Coverage at Work program.
Rebecca Flick:Well, I know we've touched upon Coverage at Work on this podcast before, but we're going to do a deep dive into our program, what we offer. It's really important that we get the word out about this program. It's free. A lot of people don't realize that. You do not have to pay to enroll.
Rebecca Flick:You do not have to pay to be coached. It is a program that we offer with the help of some sponsorship. I'm going to quickly thank them. And so thank you to ASRM and Progyny who specifically help fund our Coverage at Work program. So Sylvia, tell us a little bit about what your coverage at work days are like and how you help the influx of requests we get for this program.
Sylvia Dao:Yeah, generally it comes with, you know, inquiries from either employers or employees who have looked for kind of employee sponsor kind of things online or found us through RESOLVE and are looking for resources on just how to get employee sponsored insurance. Am I covered? Asking basic kind of insurance questions, know, and reach out to me with those. I kind of we talk through our toolkit if they've downloaded our toolkit for coverage at work and you know we'll schedule one on one coaching and have questions and just trying to understand insurance. Insurance is made to be confusing right?
Sylvia Dao:So a lot of times it's just getting the basics of the language and helping employees understand that because, you know, family building is already confusing. So to be overwhelmed by the language of insurance too, my whole goal is to just help people better understand that.
Rebecca Flick:And how does someone find the toolkit?
Sylvia Dao:Yeah. So the toolkit is available on our website under basically our employee our employer financial resources. They're able to download it there and there's the employee version and then there's the employer version as well if, you know, you're you're an employer looking to add these benefits for your employees.
Rebecca Flick:So you do get employee employers reaching out?
Sylvia Dao:Yeah. Sometimes not as often as employees who are advocating in the workplace, but we do have employers who often will reach out if their employees have reached out to them initially to have that conversation, and they're looking for more data on, like, what that means for them as an employer.
Rebecca Flick:That's amazing. I would say kudos to those.
Alise Powell:Yeah.
Rebecca Flick:Alise, when we were talking about this in pre show prep, you knew a fascinating staff stat. How many people get their insurance coverage from their employer?
Alise Powell:Yeah. It's about half of Americans get their insurance through their employer. So this is a, you know, huge swath of the population, and so we're trying to expand access to coverage. And I think doing so through your employer was a great way to do that. The other way we do that is through insurance mandates in The States so far.
Alise Powell:We've had some pretty good success lately. California is working on implementing their insurance mandate for IVF and fertility care coverage. But we encourage employers to take up the mantle and, you know, increase access to care on their own.
Sylvia Dao:Yeah. Do what the cool kids are doing and voluntarily opt in if you're in a state that has an insurance mandate.
Rebecca Flick:Yeah. And I know we always get questions, whether it's through social media or, like, our general email. It's who offers it? And we wish there was, like, a really easy way to say these are all the employers that offer family building benefits, but not a lot of them report on them or, you know, their benefits packages are private. So we wish we had a really good answer, but I do know that employers in certain sectors definitely boast when they do.
Rebecca Flick:And so there's a lot of people that know famously about Starbucks and Bank of America and Wayfair and and these tech companies.
Sylvia Dao:A lot.
Rebecca Flick:Yep. A lot of tech companies.
Sylvia Dao:Nvidia is a great one. Yeah.
Rebecca Flick:Yeah. And so when you're talking to these people, Sylvia, you're largely, you know, like you said, talking to quote unquote patient community. So people experiencing infertility or struggling to build their family. Do you have any insight into like, what's their biggest struggle when it comes to, okay, if I want this, I have to ask for it.
Sylvia Dao:I think it's just a hard conversation to have because it's such a personal and vulnerable space to be at when you're having to approach essentially maybe a stranger, HR, benefits coordinator about this very personal journey you're going to go on, especially when it comes to finance. But the big thing that I've kind of seen from it is when employees approach employers, lot of the times the employer doesn't even realize that there's this gap, that there's this missing, you know, item in their policy or, you know, some some may look at it as like an, know, an elective kind of thing. Oftentimes we see kind of employers go, Oh, well, they didn't even know. It's not necessarily like a personal slight against them. It's just the employer may not have realized that there was that gap.
Sylvia Dao:So there's that and it's just kind of building the confidence and having the information to be able to make the ask as an employee. And that's our goal with Coverage at Work in the toolkit, right? It's to essentially provide you with all the information so you can walk in and have a conversation in the most comfortable and most confident way that you can.
Rebecca Flick:Yeah. I know we did a survey with Mercer a few years ago, and that survey uncovered employers added this coverage, but because employees asked. And I think that is the biggest takeaway for a lot of people is you can't get something unless you ask for it often.
Sylvia Dao:Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. You have to have to ask ask for it and you may not be the only person that's at your company or, you know, I often tell employees reach out to like ERG, like employee resource groups within your company and see if there's anybody else who is in a similar situation or maybe in the future with their family building journey that may be interested in just connecting and kind of building a community within your company to make this ask together because it's always gonna be a little easier when you know you're supported by other employees who may utilize the benefits in the future.
Rebecca Flick:Yeah. And we've even had that situation happen and those employees started support groups together.
Sylvia Dao:Yeah.
Rebecca Flick:RESOLVE support groups. So they know that they're not alone even at work. Now we're talking about the toolkit, you know sometimes people are coming in knowing they don't have any benefits but what if, first of all, how would find someone find out whether or not they have these benefits and beyond insurance coverage, maybe for IVF, maybe benefits around adoption or surrogacy.
Rebecca Flick:And then my follow-up to that is if they do have insurance coverage that covers maybe diagnostics, medicine, but not treatment, What can they say to their HR benefits manager and how can they kind of prove that having more robust benefits will be helpful?
Sylvia Dao:Yeah, so the first question I generally have an employee ask their benefits coordinator, their HRs, are we fully insured? Are we self insured? So self insured are generally big companies with thousands of employees who have written their own policy and don't have to fall into kind of state mandates. If you're in a state that has, you know, a state mandate for say IVF coverage, a self insured company doesn't have to like align themselves with that, but they can voluntarily opt in to match. With a fully insured company, it's kind of like a group policy where it's generally more than 50 employees and less than 2,000.
Sylvia Dao:And it's like a set policy, which they can add specialty vendors to. Usually those will fall in line with state mandates. So that's kind of the first question to kind of see if you're in a state mandated state or not, and if your insurance covers that and then straight asking for the policy and looking for a lot of keywords, which I can I know it can be kind of confusing, but looking for words like, you know, third party reproduction, family billing benefits, pregnancy, like keywords like that to kind of see if there's actually coverage and then reaching out to kind of HR and starting to have that conversation on like, who is the next person? We have a specific benefits coordinator that is all about our insurance writers? Is it you?
Sylvia Dao:Do I have to go directly to, you know, the insurance policyholders? And asking those basic questions first.
Rebecca Flick:And what if the HR person came back and said, Well, what does- what should a benefit be? And you're the patient and you just don't know the answer. Where would they get information like that?
Sylvia Dao:So within our toolkit, we have our model benefits. So model benefits that we were able to create that has a very comprehensive of kind of these are the model of family benefits if you want comprehensive to cover like third party reproduction, IVF, adoption and surrogacy within that. So you can kind of use that as a baseline and say, hey, if we're looking for comprehensive benefits, this is what it looks like. And then we also have a lot of data within our toolkits that provide why this is beneficial for an employer to have family building benefits and comprehensive benefits. It helps with recruiting top talent.
Sylvia Dao:It helps keep retention rates up and it saves companies a lot of money to have IVF benefits for their employees. And it helps with the mental well-being of employees as well because you're investing in your employees and their well-being. We've got a lot of really great information like that in the toolkit that you're able to provide to say, because we get that. I feel like that is something that HR comes back with when it comes to employer employees sometimes where it's a cost thing, right? But we have a lot of data that we've seen that it actually is cost effective to add family building benefits.
Rebecca Flick:Yeah. So don't let that- to the listener.
Sylvia Dao:Yeah.
Rebecca Flick:If that's the first answer you get don't let it deter you.
Sylvia Dao:We have information to say that's not the case in a lot of these situations.
Rebecca Flick:Talk us through, you know, obviously don't use names or or company names, but a memorable story since your time here at RESOLVE and coaching employees where you where you saw someone get a win that they deserved.
Sylvia Dao:Oh my gosh. I mean, there's a couple. It's probably one of the first employee advocates that I had worked on or worked with and was one of my like, I guess I would say like junior coaching sessions that I had when when I came on or the so like a solo mission I was on when I had a one on one session with this employee and they were just so just confused and at the same time I was confused about like about about kind of learning and and you know I was able to kind of coach them in. We drafted a lot of letters together over and over and they had been with this company for ten years really really really dedicated to this company and it was a it was a larger company and had been fighting to kind of get this conversation going for about six months. After about like, I think it was like at the eighth month mark or so, we were on our third draft letter to HR and it had gone up the line to like the CEO and they had gotten all these ERG kind of groups together and ended up with I think like being able to get like these comprehensive benefits that were based on our model benefits, know, and I think it was like an $80,000 like yearly max or something like that.
Sylvia Dao:Eventually were able to finish their journey and have like a little baby boy kind of out of that. But through just like just a lot of like tears and letter drafts and just the determination I saw with this employee and how they were able to just kind of continue to push on and being able to utilize like our resources and had like such an amazing outcome. I think that one definitely stands out because it was a bigger company and it was just interesting to be there from, like, the beginning, like, the start and the end of that. So that was very cool.
Rebecca Flick:And see a family
Sylvia Dao:Yeah.
Rebecca Flick:come to fruition. I'm always amazed at our Night of Hope. We give an award out called the Hope Award for Access. And if you're listening, the Night of Hope is Tuesday, November 18. Ticket's available soon. Sponsorships available now. And we do the the Hope Award for Access in partnership with Progyny. And, the companies that receive this award are so honored because when we talk to them about the benefits that they offer, and we ask for personal stories, they start to dig a little. And I remember one year, we gave a company an award, and their benefits really stood out to us because everybody in the company, whether it was factory floor or C suite, got the same exact benefits. And that's not always the case.
Rebecca Flick:And they had realized that they had had, like, of babies join families or birthed because of their benefits. And that really motivated them to make sure they always kind of stood out and offered the best benefits. And I think, you know, when we think about this program and what we're able to track, as Sylvia will tell you, like sometimes she coaches someone and they have success, but we don't know it, right? We have to wait for them to tell us. But what we've been able to track is over 3,000,000 employees have gained access to family building benefits because of this program.
Rebecca Flick:And while we look at state mandates, and Alise will tell you if we go into a state like California, how many people is that?
Alise Powell:It's about 10,000,000 on the large green insurance market.
Rebecca Flick:That 10,000,000 took years, years and years and years to get. And so this the with 50% of Americans getting their health insurance through employees this is a great way for us to bring more benefits to more people. And I love that we have model benefits and I love that we have model legislation because that's what patients should really demand and what they deserve. You know, anything above and beyond that is amazing. But we know what good benefits and policies look like.
Rebecca Flick:And that's what we want for the community. Sylvia, what else can you tell us about the Coverage at Work program if someone's ready to dive in and they want to head over to resolve.org/coverageatwork?
Sylvia Dao:Yeah, to kind of visit and reach out if you have any questions. It's, you know, again, we love a state mandate, but employer sponsored insurance is kind of one of the most immediate ways that we can help everyone gain access to care when it comes to your family building journey. I know it can be so intimidating to go in and make that ask and you feel kind of alone and by yourself, but we're here and our access to care team is here to support you in helping you have all the information that you need in order to to make that ask and walk through this. We're here from like the start to finish with you, whether it's using, you know, looking at draft reviews or just even role playing a conversation with your HR. Happy to do that.
Rebecca Flick:Awesome. Well, Sylvia, thank you for joining us today.
Sylvia Dao:Thank you for having me.
Rebecca Flick:I need to think of a song. I know we've-
Sylvia Dao:A song?
Rebecca Flick:Oh. So there are always song titles. Do you have a favorite?
Rebecca Flick:We've used Cover Me by Bruce Springsteen before. We'll think of something. Something about
Sylvia Dao:I'm so not good at song titles.
Rebecca Flick:I think I have one. Because this is about us this is about us mentoring advocates to speak up. And I do love that Bruno Mars song, You Can Count On Me, because Sylvia's the most chill person to work with. But if you need a
Sylvia Dao:That's a good one.
Rebecca Flick:A more hyped up song, Sylvia, let me know.
Sylvia Dao:No. I like that. I like that. That's a it's a vibe. It's good.
Rebecca Flick:You're getting people at a very vulnerable time in their lives and working them working with them on something that can feel complicated, and you're breaking down that complication.
Sylvia Dao:It is, you know, and it's it's already chaotic. So I like to try to make it as kind of easy and digestible as possible. And, know, just it's already overwhelming. So I don't think they need, you know, a chaos gremlin to work through this with them. So yeah, that's I mean, that's my goal, I think with Coverage at Work and with our team is just to make sure that there's a solid understanding there and that it's a goal that's attainable for them to build their family and still feel invested in in the workplace.
Rebecca Flick:Well, awesome. It was great to have you here today. And Alise, you and I will be catching up on our next episode on all things advocacy. There's been some stuff happening over the summer, even though the summer is supposed to be quiet.
Alise Powell:I know. It's been a busy summer.
Rebecca Flick:Always. Well, for listening. And if you like this content, please head over to resolve.org. Go in the upper right hand corner and hit that donate button. We'd really appreciate it.
Rebecca Flick:And share this with someone that you know, especially someone who you think could benefit from learning more about Coverage at Work. Thanks, and we'll talk to you later.