New Connecticut Law Mandating Insurers Cover Fertility Treatment Limits Benefits to Women Under 40

Main Category: Fertility
Article Date: 29 Sep 2005 - 0:00 PDT

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A Connecticut law (SB 508) scheduled to take effect Oct. 1 that will require some health care insurers in the state to cover most fertility treatments limits the benefit to women younger than age 40, the AP/Hartford Courant reports. The law -- which the state General Assembly approved earlier this year -- makes Connecticut the 15th state to mandate that insurers provide infertility coverage. However, most states do not have age limits for the requirement. In New York, women ages 44 and older are ineligible for coverage, and in New Jersey, the cutoff is age 46. Connecticut's cutoff at age 40 was agreed upon during negotiations between the state Legislature's public health and insurance committees, according to state Rep. Chris Perone (D). Julie Salz Greenstein -- director of government relations for RESOLVE, a national infertility association -- said the group would "rather not see an age requirement in the statute," adding that the law also has a provision that limits mandated in vitro fertilization coverage to the implantation of two embryos per IVF treatment. "We'd like that decision to be left up to medical guidelines," she said. However, Keith Stover, a lobbyist for the Connecticut Association of Health Plans, said, "Really, the rationale was a need to figure out a way to manage the significant cost implications of this mandate and try to cover the treatment where it was most likely to produce the best results," adding, "The fact is, it is going to be as expensive as any mandate the Legislature has ever passed." The law will require most individual and group insurers to cover certain fertility treatments and is limited to people who have maintained the same insurance policy for at least one year. The law will not apply to employees in self-insured plans (Haigh, AP/Hartford Courant, 9/26).

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