Insurance and multiples: Connect the Dots

So the secret is out, when infertiles try to get pregnant, we often don’t care about multiples. Granted, nobody wants eight, but most of us, if we’re honest, would have been ok with two, and maybe even three.

Why? We know the risks. Multiples pregnancies are hard. They are risky for mom and babies.

Mostly it’s about the money. Consider the Shady Grove Fertility’s huge retrospective study they conducted and that is available online in the journal Fertility & Sterility. The study didn't just say that elective single embryo transfer (eSET) is good and viable treatment that doesn't have to impact a clinic's bottom-line stats. The results also led to a clear interpretation that the more a patient has to pay for their IVF treatment the more likely that patient is to lean with less caution toward upping their odds of success with each cycle.

If you don’t read Tracy Morris’ blog “How to Make a Family,” you should. http://howtomakeafamily.typepad.com/. She explains, “That is to say if I, Patient Wanna-Baby-Bad, have typically limited cash and/or typically limited insurance coverage, I'm going to follow this typical path:

(a) Because my insurance policy says I must, I'll first try superovulation with mega fertility drugs plus intrauterine insemination (IUI, y'all) as many as three times before going for the safer and better bet of IVF.

(b) And if I don't have any insurance coverage at all, I'll aim for the big guns of IVF and try to talk my doctor into transferring the max (or more) number of embryos recommended because, after all, it's the last batch of $12k I've got on hand.

It isn’t that the fertility industry is evil – it isn’t, but having to work within the constraints of limited insurance makes it riskier business for everybody.


MyFertilityPlan.com