The Excepted Fertility Benefits Rule Needs Your Comment by July 13

A new federal rule will shape how employers cover fertility care, and it needs your comment before July 13, 2026. The rule, called Excepted Fertility Benefits, reaches well past IVF. It names root-cause diagnostic evaluation, surgery, hormone testing, and fertility awareness-based methods as coverable care, alongside assisted reproductive technology.

Whether patients ever hear about those options depends partly on what people say before the comment window closes. Three federal agencies proposed the rule on May 13, 2026, and the public comment period is open now.

What is the Excepted Fertility Benefits rule?

Executive Order 14216, signed in February 2025, told the administration to come up with ways to expand access to IVF. On May 13, 2026, Treasury and the IRS, the Department of Labor's Employee Benefits Security Administration, and the Department of Health and Human Services acted on that order, publishing a proposed rule together. It shows up in the Federal Register as a new insurance category called "Excepted Fertility Benefits" (Federal Register doc. 2026-09479, pages 27140 to 27173).

The rule lets employers offer a standalone fertility benefit, separate from major medical coverage. Because it's structured as an "excepted benefit," it sits outside several ACA, HIPAA, and No Surprises Act market-reform requirements that would otherwise apply.

To qualify, "substantially all" of a plan's coverage has to go toward diagnosing, mitigating, or treating infertility or related reproductive health conditions, and that care has to come from professionals licensed to practice under applicable law.

Qualifying plans carry a $120,000 lifetime cap per participant, indexed to medical-care inflation starting with plan years after 2027. They take effect for plan years beginning on or after January 1, 2027.

Does the rule cover more than IVF?

The rule spells out a wide range of fertility care that a qualifying plan can cover. It starts with diagnostic services: hormone panels, imaging, surgical evaluation. Then fertility education and medical management. Fertility awareness-based methods. Pre-conception care. Lifestyle-based interventions. Surgical procedures. Medications. Counseling. Male-factor evaluation and treatment. And assisted reproductive technology, including IVF.

That's a wide door. A plan built around cycle charting, hormone timing, endometriosis excision, and male-factor evaluation fits the same regulatory category as an IVF-only plan. The rule just requires that the care address infertility, and root-cause diagnosis already qualifies. It doesn't force anyone's hand, either. The rule is optional: it doesn't require an employer to cover IVF, or to offer a fertility benefit at all, and as written it leaves the decision of what to cover up to each business. That's part of why this comment window matters, because the final rule can still shape what plans put in front of employees.

What does restorative reproductive medicine treat?

Restorative reproductive medicine starts from a different question than IVF does. IVF often proceeds without ever resolving the underlying diagnosis. RRM clinicians look at cycle charting, hormone timing, structural findings, and male-factor evaluation to find out why conception isn't happening, then treat what they find.

The outcome record for that approach keeps growing. A 2025 cohort of 1,310 couples received NaProTechnology treatment in Spain over five years.

The crude take-home baby rate came in at 35.3%. Among couples who stuck with care for a median of about eleven months, the adjusted cumulative rate climbed to 62.1% (Sanchez-Mendez et al., 2025).

Results tracked closely with age too, from 83.7% among women 18 to 30 down to 24.4% over 40. Age shapes those results across reproductive medicine generally.

A separate 2025 study followed 187 couples through a full restorative diagnostic and treatment program in Dublin. Across all ages, 41% of couples ended up with a documented live birth (Boyle et al., 2025).

The study also benchmarked those results against national IVF registries. In age-matched comparisons, the restorative program's live birth rate matched IVF registries that count a full retrieval with multiple embryo transfers, and it ran ahead of registries that count only a single transfer.

The restorative cohort also had fewer multiple pregnancies than IVF: two sets of twins among 77 live births, about 2.5% of pregnancies. Its singleton preterm birth rate ran less than half the CDC's, 4% versus 11.8%. It's one of the first studies to hold restorative reproductive medicine to the same registry benchmarks used for IVF.

Endometriosis is one of the most common findings behind unresolved infertility. It still takes a median of nine years from first presentation with symptoms to diagnosis (Pugsley et al., 2007).

A global analysis of infertility causes found male factor is the sole cause in about one in five couples, and a contributing factor in about one more in four (Kumar and Singh, 2015). A workup that never looks for either one won't find them, no matter how the resulting benefit gets paid for.

How to submit a public comment

The public comment period closes July 13, 2026.

Regulations.gov shares each comment across all three agencies at once. Submit a comment on Regulations.gov (docket EBSA-2026-0232).

A strong comment is short, specific, and in your own words. Agencies give more weight to original comments than to copied form letters, so write it the way you would explain the issue to a friend.

Say who you are. If you or someone close to you has looked for fertility care beyond IVF, put that in a sentence or two, because a specific personal story is harder to dismiss than a template.

Name the rule and its docket, Excepted Fertility Benefits, docket EBSA-2026-0232, so your comment reaches the right file. Then make one or two clear requests.

A few requests worth making:

• Ask the agencies to require that plan summaries and benefit descriptions list every coverable service named in the rule, not just IVF. That way employees actually see diagnostic evaluation, fertility awareness-based methods, and root-cause treatment as real options when they enroll.
• Ask that male-factor evaluation and treatment, already named in the proposed rule, become a required, visible part of any qualifying plan. It shouldn't stay a line item nobody explains to employees.
• Ask the agencies to clarify how the $120,000 lifetime cap applies across service types. A plan built around repeated IVF cycles shouldn't be favored by default over one-time diagnostic and surgical care.
• If you or someone you know has used or sought restorative reproductive medicine, NaProTechnology, or fertility awareness-based methods, say so directly. Public comments from couples carry weight a policy brief just can't.
• Ask that final guidance require plan sponsors to point employees toward clinicians trained in diagnostic and restorative fertility care, not only IVF clinics.

The International Institute for Restorative Reproductive Medicine, an independent allied institute, has published a detailed resource page on this rule. Learn more about what restorative reproductive medicine is.