A group of 30 congressional Democrats last week urged the Office of Personnel Management to update federal workers’ health insurance program to fill gaps in its infertility coverage and make it more inclusive for LGBTQ+ employees.
OPM last updated its definitions of infertility within the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program in 2015. And in its annual letter to insurance carriers who participate in the program last spring, the agency announced that it will require insurers to expand their fertility coverage to include assisted reproductive technologies like in vitro fertilization, artificial insemination and drugs associated with those procedures.
But a group of Democrats led by Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., and Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., said in a letter to OPM Director Kiran Ahuja that the recently announced changes don’t do enough to fill gaps in existing coverage related to the diagnosis of infertility, and could leave LGBTQ+ federal workers behind.