Surrogacy Expenses Not Covered by Health Plan: Judge

Employee benefit administrator EBPA LLC doesn’t have to cover pregnancy and childbirth costs for a woman who agreed to carry a baby for a London-based couple.

The woman’s employer-sponsored health plan reasonably denied coverage for her medical expenses based on a plan exclusion for “expenses for surrogacy,” a federal judge ruled Sept. 28. The woman argued that because she didn’t provide her own egg to be fertilized, she was a “gestational carrier” and not a surrogate, but the judge wasn’t persuaded. It was “hard to believe” the plan intended to cover gestational carrier arrangements while denying benefits to a plan ...