More than 170,000 Wisconsin residents face infertility challenges. Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle are pushing for legislation to cut costs of fertility treatment.
The post Wisconsin lawmakers discuss competing bills to reduce IVF costs appeared first on WPR.
This story was originally published by ProPublica.
The most powerful Republican in Wisconsin stepped up to a lectern that was affixed with a sign reading, “Pro-Women Pro-Babies Pro-Life Rally.”
“One of the reasons that I ran for office was to protect the lives of unborn children,” Assembly Speaker Robin Vos told the cheering crowd gathered in the ornate rotunda of the state Capitol. They were there on a June day in 2019 to watch him sign four anti-abortion bills and to demand that the state’s Democratic governor sign them. (The governor did not.)
“Legislative Republicans are committed to protecting the preborn because we know life is the most basic human right,” Vos promised. “We will continue to do everything we can to protect the unborn, to protect innocent lives.”
Now, however, Vos has parted with some in the national anti-abortion movement in its push for a particular measure to protect life: the life of new mothers.
Many anti-abortion Republicans have supported new state laws and policies to extend Medicaid coverage to women for a year after giving birth, up from 60 days. The promise of free health care for a longer span can help convince women in financial crises to proceed with their pregnancies, rather than choose abortion, proponents say. And many health experts have identified the year after childbirth as a precarious time for mothers who can suffer from a host of complications, both physical and mental.
Legislation to extend government-provided health care coverage for up to one year for low-income new moms has been passed in 48 other states — red, blue and purple. Not in Arkansas, where enough officials have balked. And not in Wisconsin, where the limit remains two months. And that’s only because of Vos.
The Wisconsin Senate passed legislation earlier this year that would increase Medicaid postpartum coverage to 12 months. In the state Assembly, 30 Republicans have co-sponsored the legislation, and there is more than enough bipartisan support to pass the bill in that chamber.
But Vos, who has been speaker for nearly 13 years and whose campaign funding decisions are considered key to victory in elections, controls the Assembly. And, according to insiders at the state Capitol, he hasn’t allowed a vote on the Senate bill or the Assembly version, burying it deep in a committee that barely meets: Regulatory Licensing Reform.
Vos’ resistance has put him and some of his anti-abortion colleagues in the odd position of having to reconcile their support for growing families with the failure of the Assembly to pass a bill aimed at helping new moms stay healthy.
“If we can’t get something like this done, then I don’t know what I’m doing in the Legislature,” Republican Rep. Patrick Snyder, the bill’s author and an ardent abortion foe, said in February in a Senate hearing.
Reached by phone, Vos declined to discuss the issue with ProPublica and referred questions to his spokesperson, who then did not respond to calls or emails. Explaining his opposition, Vos once said, “We already have enough welfare in Wisconsin.” And in vowing to never expand Medicaid, he has said the state should reserve the program only for “those who truly need it.”
His stance on extending benefits for new mothers has troubled health care professionals, social workers and some of his constituents. They have argued and pleaded with him and, in some cases, cast doubt on his principles. ProPublica requested public comments to his office from January 2024 to June 2025 and found that the overwhelming majority of the roughly 200 messages objected to his stance.
“I know this is supported by many of your Republican colleagues. As the ‘party of the family’ your opposition is abhorrent. Get with it,” one Wisconsin resident told the speaker via a contact form on Vos’ website.
Another person who reached out to Vos chastised him for providing “lame excuses,” writing: “The women of Wisconsin deserve better from a party that CLAIMS to be ‘pro-life’ but in practice, could care less about women and children. We deserve better than you.”
Donna Rozar is among the Wisconsin Republicans who staunchly oppose abortion but also support Medicaid for new mothers.
While serving as a state representative in 2023, she sponsored legislation to extend the coverage up to one year. Her effort mirrored what was happening in other states following the end of Roe v. Wade and the constitutional right to an abortion. Activists on both sides of the abortion issue recognized that there could be a rise in high-risk births and sought to protect mothers.
“I saw this as a pro-life bill to help mothers have coverage for up to a year, in order to let them know that they would have the help they needed if there were any postpartum complications with their pregnancy,” said Rozar, a retired registered nurse. “I thought it was a commonsense bill.”
Vos, she said, would not allow the bill to proceed to a vote even though it had 66 co-sponsors in the 99-person chamber. “The speaker of the state Assembly in Wisconsin is a very powerful individual and sets the agenda,” she said.
Rozar recalled having numerous “frustrating” conversations with Vos as she tried to persuade him to advance the legislation. “He was just so opposed to entitlement programs and any additional expenditures of Medicaid dollars that he just stuck to that principle. Vehemently.”
Vos has argued as well that through other options, including the Affordable Care Act, Wisconsinites have been able to find coverage. While some new mothers qualify for no-cost premiums under certain ACA plans, not all do. Even with no-cost premiums, ACA plans typically require a deductible or co-payments. And next year, when enhanced premium tax credits are due to expire, few people will be eligible for $0 net premiums unless Congress acts to change that.
Rozar lost her race for reelection in August 2024 after redistricting but returned to the state Capitol in February for a Senate hearing to continue advocating for the extension. She was joined by a variety of medical experts who explained the extreme and life-threatening risks women can face in the first year after giving birth.
They warned that without extended Medicaid coverage, women who need treatment and medication for postpartum depression, drug addiction, hypertension, diabetes, blood clots, heart conditions or other ailments may be unable to get them.
One legislative analysis found that on average each month, 700 women fell off the Medicaid rolls in Wisconsin two months after giving birth or experiencing a miscarriage because they no longer met the income eligibility rules.
Justine Brown-Schabel, a community health worker in Dane County, told senators of a new mother diagnosed with gestational diabetes who lost Medicaid coverage.
“She was no longer able to afford her diabetes medication,’’ Brown-Schabel said. “Not only did this affect her health but the health of her infant, as she was unable to properly feed her child due to a diminishing milk supply.”
She described another new mother, one who had severe postpartum depression, poor appetite, significant weight loss, insomnia and mental exhaustion. Sixty days of Medicaid coverage, Brown-Schabel said, “are simply not enough” in a situation like that.
Currently, new moms with household incomes up to 306% of the poverty line (or $64,719 a year for a single mom and baby) can stay on Medicaid for 60 days after birth. But the mother must be below the poverty line ($21,150 for that mom and baby) to continue with coverage beyond that. The new legislation would extend the current protections to a year.
Bipartisan unity on the legislation is so great that Pro-Life Wisconsin and the lobbying arm of the abortion provider Planned Parenthood, which offers some postpartum services, both registered in support of it before the Senate.
“It’s something that we can do and something that’s achievable given the bipartisan support for it,” Matt Sande, a lobbyist for Pro-Life Wisconsin, said in an interview. “It’s not going to break the bank.”
Once fully implemented, the extended coverage would cost the state $9.4 million a year, according to the state Legislative Fiscal Bureau. The state ended fiscal year 2025 with a budget surplus of $4.6 billion.
With the Assembly bill buried by Vos, Democratic Rep. Robyn Vining tried in July to force the issue with a bit of a legislative end run. She rose during floor debate on the state budget and proposed adding the Medicaid extension to the mammoth spending bill.
All of the Republicans who had signed on to the Medicaid bill, except one absent member, voted to table the proposal, sinking the amendment. They included Snyder, the bill’s sponsor, who in an email to ProPublica labeled the Democrats’ move to raise the issue during floor debate “a stunt.”
“Democrats were simply more concerned with playing political games to garner talking points of who voted against what, than they were in supporting the budget negotiated by their Governor,” he said.
Said Vining of the Republicans who tabled the amendment: “They’re taking marching orders from the speaker instead of representing their constituents.”
Vos’ opposition echoes that of influential conservative groups, including the Foundation for Government Accountability, a Florida think tank that promotes “work over welfare.” Its affiliated lobbying arm openly opposed the Medicaid extension for new moms when it first surfaced in Wisconsin in 2021, though it has not registered opposition since then. Reached recently, a spokesperson for the foundation declined to comment.
Over the past decade, the foundation has received more than $11 million from a charitable fund run by billionaire Richard Uihlein, founder of the Wisconsin-based shipping supplies company Uline. In recent years, Uihlein and his wife, Liz, also have been prolific political donors nationally and in the Midwest, with Vos among the beneficiaries.
Since 2020, Liz Uihlein has given over $6 million to Wisconsin’s Republican Assembly Campaign Committee, which is considered a key instrument of Vos’ power. And in February 2024, she donated $500,000 to Vos’ personal political campaign at a time when he was immersed in a tough intraparty skirmish.
One concern cited by extension opponents such as the Foundation for Government Accountability is that Medicaid coverage for new moms could be used for health issues not directly related to giving birth. Questions over how expansive the coverage would be spilled into debate in Arkansas in a Senate committee in April of this year.
“Can you explain what that coverage is? Is it just like full Medicaid for any problem that they have, or is it somehow specific to the pregnancy and complications?” asked GOP Sen. John Payton.
A state health official told him new mothers could receive a full range of benefits.
“Like, if they needed a knee replacement, I mean, it’d cover it?” Payton said.
“Yes,” came the reply.
The bill failed in a voice vote.
In Wisconsin, no lawmaker voiced any such concern during the February Senate hearing, which was marked by only positive feedback. In fact, one lawmaker and some medical experts in attendance openly snickered at the thought that Arkansas — a state that ranks low in public health measurements — might pass legislation before Wisconsin, leaving it the lone holdout.
Ultimately, the Wisconsin Senate approved the legislation 32-1 in April, sending it along to the Assembly to languish and leaving Wisconsin still in the company of Arkansas on the issue.
Despite the setbacks and Vos’ firm opposition, Sande of Pro-Life Wisconsin and other anti-abortion activists are not giving up. He thinks Vos can be persuaded and the bill could move out of its purgatory this winter.
“I’m telling you that we’re hopeful,” Sande said.
Rozar is, too, even though she is well aware of Vos’ unwavering stance. “He might have egg on his face if he let it go,” she said.
ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.
He vowed to ‘protect the unborn.’ Now he’s blocking a bill to expand Medicaid for Wisconsin’s new moms. is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.
Idaho resident Lynlee Lord said she used nutrition assistance programs that helped ease some of the stress she was dealing with while pregnant in the aftermath of her partner’s death. Food insecurity can bring heightened risks of preeclampsia, preterm birth and NICU admission, research shows. (Courtesy of Lynlee Lord)
Millions nationwide could be cut off from access to government food assistance Saturday due to the shutdown, including those who are pregnant or have babies and young children.
That possibility brings back a lot of difficult memories for Lynlee Lord, a mom of three in rural Idaho. In 2014, when Lord was 24, her partner died by suicide. She was 11 weeks pregnant with his daughter and already had a 2-year-old son.
“I went from building my life with my best friend to not having anything, and having to move into income-based apartments,” Lord said.
She was also going to cosmetology school full-time in Boise, Idaho, nearly an hour away from where she lived, spending more than 12 hours away from home each day. She worked on her dad’s ranch and cleaned houses to earn gas money. She tried to keep her stress levels down, but the one thing she didn’t worry about was food, because she had benefits from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.
“It took a lot of pressure off of me,” she said.
Many studies have shown adequate nutrition is essential for a developing fetus, and a January study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found food insecurity in pregnancy is associated with medical complications. The researchers defined food insecurity as being worried about running out of food before there’s money for more. Risks include preeclampsia, preterm birth and NICU admission.
Those who did not have access to food assistance had the highest risk of complications, according to the January study. The increased rate was alleviated by food assistance.
It’s unclear how many pregnant people use SNAP benefits on average, but the program helped feed 42 million Americans in 22 million households in the 2025 fiscal year, according to the USDA. A separate supplemental nutrition program for Women, Infants and Children — known as WIC — is often used simultaneously by participants. The federal government temporarily shored up WIC through October and promised more money, but whether the funding will last through November remains uncertain as the shutdown wears on.
The Trump administration has so far declined to use emergency funds to keep SNAP solvent while the government shutdown continues. Republican Senate Majority Leader John Thune said he won’t consider a Democrat-led standalone funding bill to keep the program going during the shutdown.
Though officials in some states are making moves to boost food assistance temporarily, others — including in Indiana and Tennessee — have refused to step in.
Lord doesn’t need food assistance anymore, but about 130,000 Idahoans still do and are set to lose their benefits starting on Saturday, Nov. 1. The Women, Infants and Children program, which helps families afford formula and other supplemental foods, could also soon run out of funds in certain states, including Idaho, the Idaho Capital Sun reported.
Gestational diabetes — one of the more severe complications that can result from food insecurity — affects up to 10% of all pregnancies on average. The condition occurs when the placenta produces hormones that decrease insulin sensitivity, creating unstable blood sugars that necessitate a more strictly controlled diet and potentially the use of insulin or other medication to keep glucose levels in a normal range. Most cases are diagnosed in the third trimester, when the amount of insulin needed to keep blood sugars normal is at its peak.
Blood sugar can also be affected by stress, poor sleep, irregular meals and other physiological factors. If left untreated, or if glucose remains unstable through the last trimester of pregnancy, it can cause the fetus to grow too quickly, increasing the risk of stillbirth and other complications, like high blood pressure and low blood sugars in the baby after delivery.
Dr. Chloe Zera, chair of the Health Policy and Advocacy Committee for the Society of Maternal-Fetal Medicine, specializes in gestational diabetes and said she saw a patient on Tuesday who was worried about losing her SNAP benefits.
“Adding that on top of what is already a stressful diagnosis is incredibly challenging for people,” Zera said. “There’s so much guilt and shame and blame that goes along with gestational diabetes and diabetes in general in pregnancy.”
People with gestational diabetes who already have children and who are food insecure will also most often feed their children before themselves, Zera added.
“They’re going to make really hard choices that mean they have even less control over their nutrition,” she said.
Dr. Andrea Shields, an OB-GYN and maternal-fetal medicine specialist at the University of Connecticut, said uncontrolled gestational diabetes can cause low blood sugar in babies after delivery, which has been linked to neurodevelopmental issues later in life. If the SNAP benefits stop, she said, more people will have to get creative about finding ways to help pregnant patients without assistance from the federal government.
“This is a perfect example of why we pay taxes and why we want to help society in general, because we don’t need to create generational issues, which this will, because it impacts the unborn fetus,” Shields said.
Lord said if she was in the same situation today that she was 10 years ago, she might have had to consider an option that never crossed her mind at the time — an abortion. Even though it was her partner’s only child, and abortion is now banned in Idaho, Lord said she may have needed to find a way to end the pregnancy out of necessity, especially considering the costs of rent, child care, food and other expenses today.
“I would’ve probably picked my child that was living,” she said. “It was really scary for me back then, and I can’t even imagine in today’s world if that happened.”
UPDATE: This story was updated to include more information about WIC on Friday, Oct. 31.
This story was originally produced by News From The States, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network which includes Wisconsin Examiner, and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., joined by President Donald Trump, delivers an announcement on “significant medical and scientific findings for America’s children” in the Roosevelt Room of the White House on Sept. 22, 2025 in Washington, D.C. Federal health officials suggested a link between the use of acetaminophen during pregnancy as a risk for autism, although many health agencies have noted inconclusive results in the research. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — A majority of Americans disapprove of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s job performance and the federal government’s evolving vaccine policy, according to a poll released Thursday by the nonpartisan health organization KFF.
In addition, the vast majority of those surveyed have heard the unproven claims made by President Donald Trump, Kennedy and others in late September that taking acetaminophen, also known as Tylenol, during pregnancy could be one possible environmental factor in a child later being diagnosed with autism.
A total of 77% of the people KFF polled said they knew of the statements, though whether people believe the claims, which have yet to be established by the medical community, varied.
Only 4% of those surveyed said it is “definitely true” that taking Tylenol during pregnancy increases the risk of the child developing autism, and 35% said the claim is “definitely false.” Thirty percent said it is “probably true” and 30% said it is “probably false.”
Combined, 65% said it’s either probably or definitely false to say that taking acetaminophen during pregnancy increases the chance of a child developing autism, a complex disorder that experts believe is the result of both genetic and environmental factors.
When broken down by political party, 86% of Democrats, 67% of independents and 43% of Republicans said the claims were either probably or definitely false.
The survey shows 59% somewhat or strongly disapprove of how Kennedy is handling his new role at the top of the country’s public health infrastructure.
The level of support changes considerably depending on political party affiliation, with 86% of Democrats, 64% of independents and 26% of Republicans disapproving.
A slightly higher number, 62%, either somewhat or strongly disapprove of the United States’ vaccine policy.A similar trend emerged when those polled were broken up by political parties. Eighty-eight percent of Democrats, 67% of independents and 31% of Republicans somewhat or strongly disapproved of vaccine policy.
The survey shows a declining share of Americans have faith in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to provide trusted information about vaccines, compared with previous KFF polls in September 2023 and earlier this year.
A total of 63% of respondents two years ago trusted the CDC on vaccines, but that has declined to 50%.
Democrats’ faith in the CDC’s vaccine recommendations has dropped from 88% two years ago to 64%, independents have gone from 61% to 47% and Republicans have remained relatively steady, only going from 40% to 39%.
Across political parties, a person’s own doctor as well as the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Medical Association remain broadly trusted for vaccine information.Eighty-three percent said they trust their doctor or health care provider, 69% believed information from the American Academy of Pediatrics and 64% had faith in the AMA.
The poll of 1,334 adults took place from Sept. 23 to Sept. 29 and had a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points for the full survey. Questions broken down by a person’s political ideology had a margin of error of plus or minus 6 percentage points.
GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.
Login