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Expanded infertility health insurance coverage: A D.C. law approved in fall 2023 aims to help people who are trying to get pregnant. As of Jan. 1, people who use DC Healthcare Alliance and Medicaid can have their infertility diagnosis covered, along with three cycles of ovulation-enhancing drugs. In 2025, people who get insurance through D.C. employers or DC Health Link will become eligible, too. Their benefits will include diagnosis, three rounds of IVF, and if needed, an embryo transfer to a surrogate. D.C. Councilmember Christina Henderson cosponsored the Expanding Access to Fertility Treatment Amendment Act. “Infertility is a medical issue, and therefore your medical insurance should cover the ability for you to seek treatment,” she said.

“Infertility is a medical issue, and therefore your medical insurance should cover the ability for you to seek treatment,” Council member Christina Henderson, who co-sponsored the law, told NBC Washington. “When folks learn that it could cost upward of $100,000, $150,000 in order for you to even be able to begin the process to try to start a family, it’s just out of reach for a lot of people,” Henderson said.

D.C. Council Member Christina Henderson cosponsored the DC Expanding Access to Fertility Treatment Amendment Act. Infertility is a medical issue, and therefore your medical insurance should cover the ability for you to seek treatment. Henderson said she hopes the law will help families. “When folks learn that it could cost upwards of $100,000, $150,000 in order for you to even be able to begin the process to try to start a family, it's just out of reach for a lot of people,” she said.

Henderson said the Give SNAP a Raise Amendment Act, estimated to cost more than $213 million between fiscal year 2023 and fiscal year 2026, can do just that at a time when inflation, hits to the agriculture industry, and higher transportation costs have increased grocery prices. “If we do what we can to expand the purchasing power of communities using SNAP and WIC, it doesn’t only benefit them, it benefits our ability to have grocery stores in these areas because now they have conducted research on who can purchase more beyond the first of the month,” Henderson said. “Doing this will have a domino effect on the issues concerning food deserts.”

Despite the 2017 law, At-Large Councilmember Christina Henderson says having a full-time nurse at every school for at least 40 hours a week has never been a reality. The law is contingent on funding, which was not included in the city’s budget. “I actually do think this model will deliver quality care to our young people and provide a level of consistency that our schools have been asking for,” Henderson says. This year, Henderson says there are about 96 full-time nurses and 88 health technicians spread out across 184 schools. In the last school year, 102 out of 183 schools had a full-time nurse. “We are trying as best we can to make sure that there are people who are properly trained in the building to do a lot of the care work,” Henderson says. “I know people think like, ‘of course, every school has a nurse.’ That is not the norm,” Henderson says.

At-Large Councilmember Christina Henderson wrote on X (formerly Twitter) Sunday that DPR’s biggest challenge in keeping pools open past Labor Day is staffing — many of its lifeguards are students whose classes have already resumed, she said. “Appreciate the DPR team working to make this happen given the heat advisory for the next few days,” she wrote, adding that she hoped to see a few more pools would be extended eventually.

Beginning at the 1:28 mark, Councilmember Henderson takes reporters from "Inside Edition" on a trip that retraced former President Trump's ride from the Federal Courthouse to Reagan National Airport

District of Columbia legislators also proposed adding in vitro fertilization coverage to Medicaid and other low-income insurance as part of broader legislation requiring that private insurers cover IVF. But because of cost concerns, they dropped the Medicaid portion of the measure from the final law enacted this year and set to take effect in October. “At this point, if states cover fertility treatments from Medicaid recipients, states must cover 100% of the cost,” said D.C. Councilmember Christina Henderson. “This makes it nearly impossible for any state to provide that expanded coverage.” The new law directs District health officials to negotiate for cost-sharing in the future, she said.

“We have Congress down the road. They would love nothing more than to disrupt in the same manner they have in the past,” said council member Christina Henderson (I-At Large), chairwoman of the health committee. (Bazron, Henderson, Parker and others are scheduled to visit OnPoint, which runs two overdose prevention centers, in New York later this month, the council offices said.)

“If the public school portion were to go away, we would have to find that money locally to make up the gap,” said D.C. Council member Christina Henderson (I-At Large). “It would be a challenge for the District, for this type of change, primarily because we would have to go back in and move some money around.”

“It is resources that could be transformational, not just in our immediate crisis moment but for how we set up the infrastructure for how we handle this in the future,” Councilmember Christina Henderson (I-At Large), chair of the Health Committee, said in an interview. “We are behind, we were behind months ago,” she said, adding, “We are moving at a glacial pace in my opinion.” “There seems to be a lot of gaps in terms of our plan and strategy,” Henderson said in an interview last week. “Narcan and fentanyl strips cannot be the totality of our plan, and right now I don’t feel we have articulated what else we need to be doing.”

“I don’t think you will find a D.C. resident who is not aware of what happened on Jan. 6 and was not impacted by some way, either that day or in the days following,” said Christina Henderson, a member of the D.C. Council and a former staffer for Senator Chuck Schumer, the majority leader. “There are so many layers of emotion here, when you think about it,” Ms. Henderson said.