A Missouri military family needed IVF. Starbucks offered better coverage than the Army.

When Brianna and Elijah Campo first learned how much it would cost them to have a baby, they considered putting their dreams of starting a family on hold. 

The Campos, now 23 and living on base at Fort Leonard Wood where Brianna Campo is serving active duty with the Army, were a few years into marriage when a doctor said their best chance at pregnancy was through in vitro fertilization. But TRICARE, the insurance plan for military members, doesn’t cover any of the medications or procedures for IVF for most members.

For years, military members and their families have been asking lawmakers to expand insurance coverage to include at least some of the costs of IVF, which on average often range from $15,000 to $30,000 per cycle.

Despite the cost, IVF — the process of collecting a woman’s eggs, fertilizing them with sperm in a laboratory to create an embryo, and then transferring the embryo to the woman’s uterus or freezing the embryo for future use — has become increasingly common.

Last month, proposed federal efforts years in the making that sought to expand military health coverage to include IVF costs was removed from a defense bill, leaving those like the Campos, who still hope to have more kids, in the lurch.

“They don’t realize how much military people need IVF,” Elijah Campo said Friday as he swaddled their son, Wesley, who was born in July after the couple made a series of career and financial sacrifices in order to fund the more than $10,000 they paid out-of-pocket for fertility treatment.

It was well worth it, they agreed as they sat in their home in southern Missouri, combing through their son’s strawberry blonde hair with their fingers. But, both asked, did it have to be this hard?

“Depending on your rank, depending on your pay, like, that is a huge financial burden that you’re taking on,” Brianna Campo said.

The cost of IVF

The Campos met several years ago in Florida through their church.

They were married in 2023 and immediately started trying for a family. By 2025, they started strictly tracking ovulation but never got a positive pregnancy test.  

Frustrated and disappointed, they sought out a fertility specialist. Ultimately their doctors at Washington University in St. Louis determined IVF was the best option. They were quoted nearly $20,000 out-of-pocket for the procedure. 

“I told her no,” Elijah Campo said after they got the estimated cost, which would’ve drained their entire savings account and more. “It’s not feasible.” 

doThey briefly considered getting on the waitlist for one of the military’s several out-of-state hospitals that would’ve helped pay for the procedure, but it would’ve included extensive travel and still cost them thousands of dollars.

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Then they learned about Starbucks’ employee insurance fertility coverage. 

Elijah Campo, who was studying information technology at the time, put college on hold to work full-time at the Starbucks just off the Army base. It was their best hope for affording IVF.

They put vacations on pause. They cancelled entertainment game subscriptions and they scoured Facebook marketplace for discounted baby items. 

Elijah Campo’s insurance ultimately paid for all the IVF medications and for the birth, cutting the original cost estimate they were given in half. 

Federal IVF coverage stripped again

Last summer, Morgan Scarborough moved from Germany to Fort Leonard Wood with her spouse and two children after her husband was re-stationed. Within several weeks she opened Abeille Feeding Clinic, aimed at helping military and low-income families in the rural Missouri town with breastfeeding support. 

She works with and knows military families whose challenges in infertility were only exacerbated by the culture and lifestyle of the military. Then came the hospital bills.

“We’re already living a higher-stress life with frequent moves, changing medical facilities, deployments, spouses being gone,” she said. “We think we’d have a little bit more grace and understanding that it should be covered.”

Up until this year, most Republicans and Democrats in Congress seemed to agreed. So did President Donald Trump, who campaigned on the promise of free IVF for all.

Some good news came for advocates on Friday, when the U.S. Department of Defense announced a 3-year-long pilot program in which the military will reimburse costs of fertility preservation for some active duty military. To be eligible, the service members either currently or will soon receive orders during which they receive hazardous duty pay, or are physically separated from their partner for at least 180 days. The program will annually reimburse up to $500 for sperm cryopreservation services and up to $10,000 for egg freezing.

However, the latest attempt to expand IVF coverage for all military members at the federal level was killed by Senate Republicans in July, despite bipartisan support for the proposal in years past, even though it never ultimately became law. 

All 14 Republicans on the Senate Armed Services Committee, including Sen. Eric Schmitt of Missouri, voted to remove the language from the defense bill, influenced in large part by anti-abortion leaders opposed to expanded IVF access. 

Outside the pilot program, the military’s insurance plan only covers assisted reproductive technology services, including IVF, for active-duty members who sustained serious illness or injury resulting in infertility during their military service.

“It does need to change. It should change,” Scarborough said. “How long will it take? I don’t know. Will it?”

The latest federal decision not to broadly fund IVF was “crushing” for military families, said state Sen. Tracy McCreery, a Kirkwood Democrat. 

McCreery for the past few years has unsuccessfully proposed legislation seeking to require insurance companies to cover fertility treatments for all Missourians, both military and civilian. While McCreery said her bills haven’t faced direct push-back from the public or her peers, she assumes forces behind the scenes in the Republican supermajority are keeping them from getting a hearing.

“There’s part of me that suspects that what has dampened the enthusiasm for this work in Jeff City is also the same force or the same people at play in D.C. as it relates to this military coverage,” she said. “I think one of the challenges is societally, we still aren’t comfortable talking about these kinds of things.”

In 2024, McCreery was among several Democrats and Republicans in the Missouri statehouse who proposed legislation seeking to protect the procedure after IVF was temporarily halted in Alabama as the result of a state Supreme Court ruling. None of the bills received a committee hearing. 

That same year, state Sen. Rick Brattin, a Harrisonville Republican who is now running for Congress, said during a press conference that the IVF process was the “reckless storage and disposal of human life” because it’s not guaranteed that every embryo created is implanted in the womb.

A few months later, Missouri voters approved a constitutional amendment that overturned the state’s near-total abortion ban. This “Right to Reproductive Freedom Initiative” also protects access to IVF. In November, Missourians will be asked if they want to repeal the amendment.

Planning for a future family

Brianna Campo’s decision to join the military a few years prior was based in large-part on how she imagined the military benefits — including medical insurance and education opportunities — would set her family up for success in the future. 

“It gives us just a little bit of stability for just a few years just so we can figure out life,” she said. “Start a family, get some education.”

Elijah Campo noted he receives many similar benefits working at Starbucks. 

“The healthcare is better, their college is (free), heck they give us even Spotify for free,” Elijah Campo said. 

Elijah Campo is on a 12-week paid parental leave from Starbucks. He is eager to get back to his studies. But he’s weighing the benefits of staying at Starbucks, where he now works as a manager, for a couple more years as they talk about the possibility of a second child. 

Brianna Campo has eighteen weeks of leave through the Army. She has one year left on her military contract. If she doesn’t extend her time in the service, she plans to go to nursing school.

The Campos have six embryos left. They’re paying about $70 a month for storage fees as they decide how soon they want to have another child.

Occasionally Brianna Campo meets other service members on base also navigating infertility. But mostly she finds community through a military IVF support group on Facebook where she reads about countless stories similar to her own, of families who discovered their military benefits didn’t ultimately meet their needs.

“I was like, I’m so young. 
I’ve got no reason not to join the military. I’m active. I’m fit. 
Like, I could do these things,” Brianna Campo said of her initial decision to enlist. “Unfortunately, it didn’t really work out that way in the end.”