Healthcare Brew covers pharmaceutical developments, health startups, the latest tech, and how it impacts hospitals and providers to keep administrators and providers informed.

Healthcare Brew

Women’s Health

Cassie McGrath

Healthcare Brew delivers the latest news and trends in healthcare.

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The One Big Beautiful Bill Act is set to have big implications for hospitals and 

. But experts say it could also impact patient care—specifically, maternal health.

 for maternal and infant mortality and morbidity, according to the 2024 March of Dimes Report Card. Now, the bill is cutting federal spending on Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) by $1 trillion, 

 beneficiaries potentially without coverage by 2034.

This is a challenge, as Medicaid is the largest single payer for pregnancy-related services, KFF reported in May, covering 41% of births across the country and nearly half of births in rural areas. States with the most rural hospitals are 

 to have reproductive rights restrictions. (For example, Alabama, Oklahoma, and Texas all have abortion bans and are experiencing a rural health crisis.)

“Medicaid is vital for moms and babies in this country,” Michael Warren, chief medical and health officer at nonprofit March of Dimes, told Healthcare Brew.

Additionally, there’s a growing fear Medicaid cuts will 

 of some rural maternal care units or entire facilities, experts previously told Healthcare Brew. When hospitals close services, 

This means not only are there healthcare workers leaving—or 

 to—these states but there’s also likely to be 

 in places where abortion isn’t allowed.

“We’re at a moment where we need to be doing all we can to think about increasing access and helping people get healthier before pregnancy and have a healthy pregnancy,” Warren said. “Anything we do that takes our foot off the gas is not moving us in the right direction.”

Planned Parenthood is one example of maternal health clinics that may be hit by cuts.

 of a preliminary injunction to stop Medicaid cuts from affecting Planned Parenthood, but the nonprofit organization is still on the chopping block for potential defunding.

Planned Parenthood has been reportedly “targeted” for 

, but the centers provide more than reproductive care, offering preventative and primary care, Monica Skoko Rodríguez, director of medical standards production at Planned Parenthood, told us. 

The organization also treats underserved populations, with 76% of 600 Planned Parenthood centers based in “rural or medically underserved areas,” according to a fact sheet.

If it were defunded, patients could lose access to care like cancer screenings and intimate partner violence screenings, she added, leaving them to turn to hospitals for care instead. Avoidable emergency department visits overall cost the healthcare system an estimated $32 billion each year, 

“They are not going to be able to access [these resources] until things really spiral out of control, and that’s where we see an overload in emergency care systems and hospital systems, when things would have been much better managed much earlier on and would have had much better outcomes for the patient and for the healthcare ecosystem at large,” Rodríguez said.

A black pregnant woman with a medical cross logo glowing behind her

Medicaid cuts could lessen access to maternal health

The US already received a D+ for maternal and infant mortality and morbidity from March of Dimes. 

Now that the Supreme Court officially ruled last week the Trump administration 

 in research grants as part of its defunding of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) that started in February, universities and hospitals across the country are left scrambling to remain stable.

Healthcare and academic research rely heavily on NIH funding. 

 reported NIH funding drives the economy, bringing in $2.56 for every dollar of spent funding and supporting 400,000+ jobs across the country.

The UMass Chan Medical School laid off or furloughed an estimated 200 employees and cut its incoming fall 2025 graduate class from 70 students to 13 due to cuts, according to the institution. 

The American College of Obstetricians also 

 due to the administration’s anti-DEI push, which it said conflicted with its efforts to reduce maternal health issues.

Still, the White House is set on limiting money across federal agencies, proposing $27 billion in 

—that’s $18 billion less than before—in the Trump administration’s discretionary budget proposal.

Industry and philanthropic dollars can create a lifeline for some research. For instance, Robert Wright, ​​chair of the department of environmental medicine at New York’s Mount Sinai, 

 as an option for environmental health-related research, and the head of AI and engineering at Northwestern Medicine’s cardiovascular institute, Adrienne Kline, received $1.4 million in industry funding from Big Tech to 

. Kline called these industry partnerships a “godsend.”

Despite this, Heather Pierce, senior director for science policy and regulatory counsel at the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), said there’s “no replacement” for federal government funding.

“It is hard to overstate how important NIH funding is to scientific progress,” she told us.

Philanthropic organization the Gates Foundation announced on Aug. 4 it would provide $2.5 billion through 2030 to support R&D in women’s health, specifically to address five areas: obstetric care and maternal immunization, maternal health and nutrition, gynecological and menstrual health, contraceptive innovation, and sexually transmitted infections.

Researchers at universities, hospitals, and biotech companies including health tech company Philips Innovation Center, biotech company Vedanta Biosciences, and Massachusetts General Hospital, all based in Massachusetts, will receive funds from the Gates Foundation, Rasa Izadnegahdar, director of maternal, newborn, child nutrition, and health at the nonprofit, told Healthcare Brew.

“Some of the challenges around women’s health have been longstanding. It’s been 

 for a long time,” Izadnegahdar said, noting this as one of the reasons the foundation wanted to pursue women’s health.

And that lack of research is “only exacerbated by the recent cuts in NIH,” he said.

“Our hope is that we create some enthusiasm and optimism in the space,” Izadnegahdar added, and “that others will join in as well.”

Other private contributions have also been made this year, like an $8.6 million donation from the local estate of community leader Donald Coldren to Pennsylvania-based health system WellSpan Health, where the late Coldren and his wife were once patients.

Philanthropic donations bring in an estimated 

 to health and science research, whereas NIH doled out $47.4 billion in 2024.

“It is a very complicated, very hard time in biomedical research,” she said.

Not only did researchers lose their funding but it’s been 

 released from grants that had already been awarded, and the application process for new projects has slowed down, she said. The National Cancer Institute, for example, anticipates it will only be able to fund 4% of grant applicants after October, down from 9%, 

“Our nation decided decades ago to create this relationship between academic institutions and the federal government that had a vision for advancing scientific progress,” Pierce said.

Further, she said other funding sources, like philanthropic or industry sources typically have a specific mission or a commercial end—such as the Gates Foundation’s recent efforts to fund research in specific areas of women’s health—whereas the NIH has been dedicated to improving scientific progress and health advancement broadly.

“There is no replacement for the federal government in terms of the breadth, the scope, the volume of research that it can and has and should fund,” Pierce said. 

Correction 08/29/25: This story has been updated to reflect the correct number of employees laid off or furloughed from UMass Chan Medical School in April 2025 and the correct number of incoming students.

Illustration of an open hand with a coin on the left and an open hand in a doctor's white coat with a heart that has a cross in the middle

Philanthropic, industry grants help offset missing NIH grants but cannot fully fill gaps

While the NIH is a driver of new medications, jobs, and economies, funding is still being cut. 

Accessing maternal care in rural areas is 

 don’t even provide birthing services, according to the Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform.

So the Hope Women’s Resource Clinic, based in Beaumont, Texas, is hitting the road and bringing care to patients.

The maternal health clinic launched a “mobile medical unit” in 2020, and in 2023 switched to a 38-foot van that has two exam rooms, a waiting area, and a lab, Jeanette Harvey, executive director of the clinic, told Healthcare Brew. The mobile unit provides free care for pregnant people and only operates in Texas, mainly serving Jefferson, Orange, Hardin, Chambers, and Galveston counties surrounding Beaumont, a city of 115,000+ people.

“There’s nothing like us—nobody that does what we do,” Harvey said.

The mobile unit was created after clinic staff realized how hard it was for patients to reach them without access to public transportation, she said. The 

 reported that 21% of US adults who didn’t have vehicle or public transit access could not access “needed medical care” in 2022.

The facility initially started to provide Lyfts for patients in need of transportation, but soon realized it would be easier to go to them instead, according to Harvey.

It runs Monday through Thursday and serves each area consistently—always Jefferson County on Mondays, for example.

 In Texas, patients can get access to Medicaid coverage if they are pregnant (the Texas Standard reported 

 of 31.3 million Texas residents were pregnant and on Medicaid as of 2022), so a big part of the clinic’s work is conducting the medical testing required to get patients covered.

“If somebody’s trying to get on insurance, they don’t want to go somewhere where they have to pay to get proof that they need to be on insurance,” Harvey said, explaining that people need to provide documentation of pregnancy from a medical examiner to qualify for Medicaid.

The unit conducts ultrasounds and STD testing and also has the Hope Academy, which provides educational resources to parents until their baby turns one, according to Harvey.

At the academy, any parent patient of the clinic can take in-person or online classes about healthy behaviors, like going to the doctor and exercising, in exchange for points that help them access donated baby beds, car seats, diapers, wipes, and formula, Harvey said. The clinic delivers these items via the mobile unit.

Staff includes a medical director, a radiologist, an ob-gyn, registered nurses, licensed sonographers, a life coach, and a licensed counselor. The unit also provides a list of doctors that are covered by Medicaid.

The Hope Clinic does not receive government funding, Harvey said, operating solely on donations.

The clinic served about 3,800 patients in total in 2023, 273 of which were at its mobile unit. The total was nearly 4,700 total last year, 399 of which were mobile patients. It’s on track to treat 500 people through its mobile unit by the end of this year, Harvey said.

Additionally, the Hope Clinic is adding a physical site in Port Arthur, a city in Jefferson County about 30 minutes from the clinic’s main location, Harvey said. Once that building is finalized—they’re aiming for the end of the year, she said—staff will take the mobile unit to another area that’s yet to be determined.

At the Beaumont site, the clinic just opened a 3,400-square-foot parenting center, Harvey said, with the aim of serving parents and babies up to three years after birth.

“That’s where we see a lot more of the need,” she said, “beyond the prenatal.”

Babies do a lot of development in those first three years, which can have lasting effects on their life, the national 

 at Vanderbilt University reported in 2021.

The clinic acquired in 2020 donated property across the street, where it plans to build a shelter to support unhoused women and children. Harvey said the center’s waiting for $500,000 in funding to come through, but once it’s built, the shelter will have a caretaker on-site and operate as sort of a “mini hotel” to allow families to find permanent housing.

R Cody Stringer, senior director of innovation and product development at nonprofit March of Dimes, which has a number of mobile maternity units and works to improve maternal and infant care, said in an emailed statement the vans are “a lifeline for the families without access to appropriate pregnancy care.”

According to March of Dimes, only 2% of mobile health units in the US offer maternity care.

“We need more of these community-based interventions to ensure every mom and baby can access quality care, no matter where they live,” Stringer said.

Blue and white bus that reads Free ultrasound, pregnancy, and STD testing

Hope Women’s Resource Clinic Texas clinic is providing maternity care from a van 

The van travels to five counties in East Texas, helping pregnant people get on Medicaid and access prenatal care. 

This Texas clinic is providing maternity care from a van 

illustrated headshot of caroline catherman, healthcare brew reporter

Caroline Catherman

Getting pregnant can be more expensive than a new car. Don’t believe us? Ask someone who’s done in vitro fertilization (IVF).

According to fertility education site FertilityIQ, a single IVF cycle is $23,000+ depending on location and whether services like medication and pre-implantation genetic screening are included. Patients complete an average of 2.3 to 2.7 cycles, which can total up to $50,000.

And it’s a growing industry: The US fertility industry is set to increase from $5.3 billion in 2023 to $8.7 billion by 2033, according to market research and consulting firm Precedence Research.

, and offer programs that provide refunds if IVF is unsuccessful.

San Francisco-based startup Future Family offers both. The company introduced an insurance program in February with a “baby or your money back” guarantee. If a patient using the company’s IVF insurance doesn’t have a live birth after two cycles, they can file a claim and get a refund up to their coverage limit. Depending on the policy, that can be $15,000, $30,000, or $50,000.

“If you fail two cycles, you could lose $40,000–$50,000. It’s a huge amount of money, and it sets you back when you’re starting your family. So it’s really important that we can insure IVF and make sure that if someone does fail, they have an opportunity to try again, or at least get the money back if they’re going to go a different path,” Claire Tomkins, founder and CEO of Future Family, told Healthcare Brew. 

Founded in 2016, Future Family has raised over $148 million in venture capital funding from firms such as Aspect Ventures, Portfolia, and Correlation Ventures. Following the launch of its insurance program, the company announced in April it had secured a $400 million financing program from Clear Haven Capital Management to expand its lending platform.

The price of Future Family insurance is individualized based on each patient’s health information. Patients who are more likely to conceive due to factors like age and lifestyle pay lower premiums, but on average, insurance through Future Family is about 20% of the cost of treatment, Tomkins explained.

“So if you were doing IVF for $40,000 for two cycles, then you’d pay about $8,000 for insurance. But the good news is your $40,000 is protected completely,” she said.

The cost of that insurance premium can also be paid through financing, she added.

There are caveats, though. For instance, the insurance has a time limit: Patients have 20 months to complete two cycles of IVF and transfer viable embryos and 30 months of total coverage, according to the company’s website. For reference, one full cycle of IVF takes about four to six weeks, and most treatment centers recommend waiting at least another four to six weeks between IVF cycles, according to Cleveland Clinic. 

The website also notes there are restrictions on who qualifies. Patients 38 and older can’t get coverage unless they’re using donor eggs, nor can patients who have already started an IVF cycle or have failed to conceive after an IVF cycle in the past.

Separate from this new insurance product, Tomkins says Future Family has also given out $200 million in credit to 10,000 patients through its fertility financing program.

Patients pay $300 to $500 a month on their loans on average, Tomkins added. Interest rates vary and depend on factors like credit score, income, and the loan’s size.

Though it’s not a fertility clinic, Future Family has a nationwide network of fertility clinics it works with.

“People are struggling to figure out the best way to pay for fertility treatment, and then on top of that, they’re trying to figure out, if it’s not successful, what happens next? And so now we’re able to really address that and help consumers,” Tompkins said.

IVF can cost $50k. Future Family wants to make it refundable 

The company began offering a “baby or your money back” guarantee in February.

, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) announced in a statement it would rescind 2022 guidance from the Biden administration that allowed patients to have abortions in emergency situations.

Former President Joe Biden sought to override state laws banning abortion and ensure pregnant people had access to reproductive care in emergencies, like if their life was at risk.

Biden’s guidance cited the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA), a national law that requires hospitals to examine and treat all patients even if they can’t pay for their care. Under CMS’s new directive, EMTALA is still in place as federal law and encompasses treating “identified emergency medical conditions” for a pregnant person and/or an unborn child, but the federal government is no longer directly asking states to provide abortions during emergencies.

As a result, some experts worry a lack of directive could lead to more 

Melissa Simon, an ob-gyn at Northwestern Medicine in Chicago, told us she is “deeply concerned” about CMS’s decision.

“The current administration is trying to rescind this but is not changing the EMTALA law, which still obligates hospitals to provide emergency care,” she said. “However, what this will do is promote more confusion, which leads to a dangerous climate of legal uncertainty under which physicians and health professionals should not operate.”

Even with Biden’s guidance in place, the 

 reported last August “dozens” of pregnant people have been turned away from emergency rooms since the 

 ruling, including patients with life-threatening pregnancy complications. In some cases, 

In the June 3 announcement, CMS said it would enforce EMTALA, which protects patients who show up to emergency departments seeking treatment, including cases where a pregnant person and/or their unborn child is “in serious jeopardy.”

 from former Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra that explicitly directed clinicians to provide abortions if “stabilizing treatment” is required to resolve a medical issue.

Simons said the new CMS’s guidance “undermines” clinicians ability to provide “evidence-based life-saving care without delay or discrimination,” and that patients will now be exposed to higher pregnancy health risks. She also said this may erode trust between patients and their providers.

“No patient should be forced to suffer, and no healthcare provider should be forced to choose between their oath and the law,” she said.

A clinic chair and monitor on a sound block with large sticky notes placed around. Credit: Anna Kim

New CMS directive adds legal confusion for pregnancy care in cases of emergency 

CMS creates more confusion and revokes Biden-era guidance to allow abortion care for patients experiencing emergency health concerns. 

 becomes increasingly popular, more and more patients are coming to a harsh realization: It’s not cheap.

A single cycle including medications can cost anywhere from $10,000 to $15,000 according to drug discount company GoodRx, plus between $300 to $1,000 a year for storage. In most circumstances, it’s also not covered by insurance.

Enter Cofertility. The 2022 startup offers a unique trade: freeze your eggs for free when you donate half to a family who wouldn’t otherwise be able to conceive.

Lauren Makler—who previously worked at Uber and founded Uber Health—co-founded Cofertility with entrepreneur Halle Tecco after looking into egg donation for herself several years ago. After Makler conceived a daughter unassisted in 2021, she said she built the service she would have wanted if she had gone the egg donation route.

“I really wanted to do something about access, and then at the same time, I felt intended parents deserved more options and deserved options that felt more in alignment with the way they wanted to grow their family,” she said.

 The startup finished its nearly $7.3 million Series A 

 in April, and though she declined to give exact numbers, Makler said the program has matched intended parents with donors “well into the quadruple digits.”There are some caveats, however. Not everyone who’s interested in what the company calls the “split” program qualifies. Makler said Cofertility limits participation in the program to criteria recommended by the FDA and the 

American Society for Reproductive Medicine

, such as limiting egg donors to ages to 21–34 and barring people with certain genetic conditions. All donors must also have an anti-Müllerian hormone (AMH) level above 2.0, which is associated with successful retrievals.

Those who don’t qualify for the split program can still freeze their eggs through the startup, Makler said. A single cycle and 10 years of storage with Cofertility costs about $16,000 for patients in New York City, compared to an industry average of $17,773 for a single cycle and five years of storage in the same location, according to 

Cofertility also prioritizes transparency in egg donation. The majority of Cofertility’s egg donors and recipients so far have chosen to disclose their identities, meet each other, and exchange contact information, Makler said, though a small number still choose not to.

 around egg donation is this idea that you could be walking down the street someday and see someone who looks like you and wonder if that’s the child born from the donation. And with a disclosed donation, that fear entirely evaporates,” Makler said.

She made it clear that donors who don’t exchange info aren’t promised complete anonymity, because, let’s face it—with 

, there’s no way to guarantee your biological kid won’t do a DNA swab and find you one day through a random cousin.

 Colleen Denny, a New York-based ob-gyn, told Healthcare Brew she thinks it’s a promising concept but what really defines the quality of models like this is whether they’re transparent with their donors about what happens if things don’t go according to plan, who pays in the case of multiple cycles or medical complications, and what the realistic chances of conceiving with egg donation are.

“You really want to understand what it means to ‘split your eggs,’” she said.

Nearly 40,000 people froze their eggs in 2023, according to 

 from the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology. But there’s 

 pregnancy will be possible through this route. Only about half of in vitro fertilization cycles resulted in successful births in 2023.

“A lot of people think that if they freeze three eggs, they’re going to have three babies in the future, and that’s just not how egg freezing works,” Denny said. “This is something of a backup plan, but not a guarantee.”

Makler said Cofertility makes this and other technicalities clear in legal agreements that donors sign with the business and with their egg donation recipients.

For instance, intended parents get to keep the extra egg if an odd number of eggs are retrieved.

The agreements also state that intended parents—not the donor—will pay a premium for temporary health insurance for the donor and front the bill for unexpected medical costs up to a previously agreed-upon amount.

For recipients, Cofertility also offers a 

Correction 06/13/2025: The headline of this story has been corrected to reflect Cofertility is making egg freezing free, not donation.

Headshot of Cofertility founder Lauren Makler

Meet Cofertility, the startup making egg freezing free—for some

If you thought grocery store eggs were getting expensive…

 a “baby bonus,” i.e., cutting $5,000 checks to incentivize families to have more children in response to 

While still just an idea, it spurred concern among reproductive health experts. They told Healthcare Brew pregnant patients face many challenges, from 

For instance, it costs $18,865 to have babies in hospitals, including pregnancy, birth, and postpartum care, 

 of people who give birth are on Medicaid, and with Congress considering 

, patients may soon pay those costs out of pocket.

“$5,000…is probably a drop in the bucket in terms of raising a child. But is it maybe a step in the right direction? Yes,” Monica Cepak, CEO at women’s digital health company Wisp, said. “I think it should be part of a broader policy around reproductive health and childcare in our country.”

 First and foremost, the number of places to give birth in the US is on the decline.

March of Dimes, a nonprofit that works to support maternal and infant health, reported that in 2021 and 2022, about 1 in 25 obstetric units closed in the US and 70% of birthing units are located within 10 states. The organization also 

 35% of US counties don’t have a single birthing facility or obstetric clinician.

“To have wide swaths of this country without the presence of a maternity ward makes it seem more like a developing nation as opposed to one of the most industrialized nations with one of the best healthcare systems on the planet,” Melissa Simon, an ob-gyn at Northwestern Medicine in Chicago, said.

 was overturned in 2022, there’s been a rise in 

 in the US, meaning it’s more dangerous to have children now.

Research from nonprofit research organization the 

 found that in Texas, which has a strict six-week ban on abortion with no exceptions for rape or incest, maternal mortality rates rose by 56% between 2019 and 2022, compared to an 11% increase across the US overall.

Infant death rates have also risen, with 

 5.6 deaths for every 1,000 live births in 2022, up from 5.4 in 2021.

“Women who are in states where there’s restrictive reproductive healthcare laws…

Pregnant people living in states with “full support of reproductive healthcare,” like Illinois, New York, or California are also hesitant to travel to states with bans, she added. Some people from states with bans are choosing to stay in states with abortion access throughout their pregnancy, she said.

“It is unconscionable to think that the president or the government would give $5,000 to incentivize having a child while not taking care of the woman herself,” she said.

A woven basket filled with stacks of $100 bills and a sticky note with a baby stroller icon.