Health Care / Medicine

Which Companies Offer IVF Benefits? And Which Companies Are On The Naughty List? 

Given how important and life-changing these benefits are, we can hope that the business case for offering them eventually wins out.

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Hearing that you need assistance to conceive a child can be heartbreaking.  And worse, for many people, paying for the assistance can be financially out of reach.  Fertility treatments are going to be expensive, no matter whether it’s (1) artificial insemination with a sperm donor (which is more clinically referred to as intrauterine insemination (IUI)), (2) in vitro fertilization (IVF) with one’s own genetic material or with a donor, or, (3) the pinnacle of expensive fertility treatments, surrogacy.

So working for a company that offers health benefits that include fertility treatments can be a major perk of the job.  Way more major than a ping pong table or an inter-floor slide.  With that said, and with the holidays around us, here’s a look at some of the companies that make the “Nice List” by giving their employees the benefit of helping them grow their families.

Starbucks.  Praise the Lord! This is fortunate because not only am I writing this column at a Starbucks, but I feel a sense of obligation to support businesses that treat their employees right. Also, thanks to my frequent purchases here, the company can afford to cover $20,000 for IVF and related medication for all eligible employees. Even part-time baristas, who make on average only $10,000 a year, qualify for benefits. So give them a break if they don’t get your name exactly right when your order is ready.

Starbucks has reaped the rewards of the good publicity. There are stories of women specifically taking a job at Starbucks just for IVF benefits. Now if only the eggnog latte could come out in August every year…

Johnson & Johnson.  Johnson & Johnson also offers its employees family-formation benefits.  For employees in US, the company offers the amount of $35,000 for fertility treatments; even more, employees can also receive $20,000 in reimbursement benefits per child for both adoption and surrogacy. That’s a helpful chunk of change, and very likely to mean no-tears for new parents. Hopefully for J&J, the new parents will repay the favor by choosing the company’s baby soaps and band-aids for their little guys.

Ernst & Young. Accountants want babies too! In 2016, E&Y announced employees would receive up to $25,000 per couple for fertility, surrogacy, adoption, and egg freezing. Not bad! If any of you are lawyers who are good at math, you might consider submitting an application to E&Y.

Columbia University. The prestigious university offers employees a “Surrogacy Assistance Program” that includes reimbursement of up to $30,000 in eligible surrogacy-related benefits. Interestingly, fees paid to an egg donor or egg donor agency, as well as fees paid to a surrogate, are all non-eligible expenses.  But not to fear. There are plenty of other related expenses that will get you to $30,000 (and beyond) fast.

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American Express. You know the company with the green, no, now it’s blue, credit card. In 2016, they also made the leap of offering more generous benefits to their employees both on the parental leave front (up to 20 weeks for both men and women) and offering benefits of up to $35,000 for adoption and surrogacy. Impressive. And this more than makes up for not being able to use the card at Costco.

Pinterest. The tech company famous for making us all think we might be crafty designers tops the Nice List with fertility benefits that reach six figures. Pinterest offers its employees up to $100,000 in fertility treatment reimbursement for four cycles of IVF, including even pre-implantation genetic screening costs. Moreover, unlike some companies, Pinterest doesn’t require employees to prove infertility. The “infertility” requirement, innocuous seeming at first, can have the effect of hurting same-sex couples who equally need assisted reproductive technology to have a child, but who have occasionally been deemed unable to meet the “medical” requirement.

The Naughty List.  So who’s on the Naughty List? Everyone else. Well, maybe not quite everyone else, there are a number of other generous companies (such as some tech favs like Google, Facebook, Apple, Intel, Microsoft, and eBay, and firms such as Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer and Baker McKenzie), but really just about everyone else. Fertility treatments are expensive benefits. But given how important and life-changing they are, we can hope that the business case for offering these benefits eventually wins out, and more companies provide similar benefits to their employees. Until then, most companies got nothing but lumps of coal in their stockings.

Ellen TrachmanEllen Trachman is the Managing Attorney of Trachman Law Center, LLC, a Denver-based law firm specializing in assisted reproductive technology law, adoption, and estate planning. You can reach her at babies@abovethelaw.com.

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