Utah added more IVF and GLP-1 options for public employees — here’s how it’s working

After healthcare options were expanded for Utah public employees, treatments like in vitro fertilization have been approved as benefits since 2025, and weight loss drugs like GLP-1s since the 2026 legislative session. They do, however, come with some limitations for employees of more than 350 public entities in Utah. 

Following a state-mandated pilot to allow payments toward IVF treatments, health benefits managers found birth complications were reduced by having patients transfer a single embryo at a time.

Limiting the number of embryos is a solution that will “hopefully have a better outcome for everybody, mom, child in the state as well,” Chet Loftis, managing director of the state’s public employees’ health program told the Legislature’s retirement and independent entities interim committee in a late June meeting.

“If we could get to that, so we didn’t have these multiple bursts, we could reduce complications like crazy. We could save money,” Loftis said. 

Utah is one of 25 states that have adopted IVF coverage laws, according to the nonprofit Resolve, though only for state employees. Policies allowing IVF treatments aren’t new in the state, but they have been updated recently. 

Since the implementation of a 2025 law providing coverage for assisted reproductive technology, state health program managers haven’t seen any multiple births and an increase in the number of procedures.

So, the state switched from offering a one-time assisted reproductive technology $4,000 stipend in favor of a regular plan benefit. “We are continuing to use the savings from complications to be able to pay for the benefit at the front end,” Loftis added.

A single IVF cycle typically costs between $15,000 and $30,000.

The state has also approved adding weight management options for public employees, allowing an expansion of payments for GLP-1s, a pharmaceutical that has typically been used to treat diabetes, but it has lately been widely used as a weight loss solution. 

This year lawmakers approved the Weight Management and Obesity Pilot Program, adding to an existing bariatric surgery program that’s available for people meeting certain body mass index numbers and other conditions. 

“The state desires to make available an alternative GLP-1 benefit for medically qualified members that would be limited in scope to stay within the adjusted budget of the bariatric surgery pilot program,” the 2026 resolution reads.

Other states that cover weight loss medications are paying as much for the medicine as Utah pays for all the drugs combined, Loftis said. “So you’ve got to be really, really, really careful in this space,” he said.

However, with the pharmaceutical becoming cheaper and going from costing thousands of dollars a month to a couple of hundred dollars, the possibilities for users are expanding.

The GLP-1 program is administered on a reimbursement basis and limited to a 24-month coverage, according to the law. Like with the bariatric surgery benefit, staffers must have the body mass index and morbidities conditions to qualify.

“This is a very limited program, in the sense that the most that we pay is up to $150 a month for up to 24 months again, with the idea of trying to navigate this thing to the $1 million that’s been appropriated,” Loftis said.