Deleware State Employee IVF Benefits Slashed

If you live in Deleware, you'd better get hopping to the fertility doc's office as fast as you can.

Starting in July, all employees who have health insurance through the state will be required to foot one-quarter of the bill for all infertility-related medical services and prescription medications.

The new state health insurance benefits plan also caps lifetime infertility services at $10,000 for medical care and $15,000 for medicines -- a drop from the previous total of $30,000.

One cycle of in vitro fertilization can average $12,500 a year, according to the American Society of Reproductive Medicine.

The decision was made by the Delaware State Employee Benefits Committee, which manages the state's projected $570 million self-funded insurance plan for fiscal 2011, beginning July 1. It covers about 110,000 state employees, retirees, their dependents and other group health plan participants.

The committee, chaired by Ann Visalli, director of the state Office of Management and Budget, estimates it will save about $625,000 with the cutback, expected to affect 150 people.

"We have a lot of things that affect certain groups of employees and not others and some are for diseases that people have no control over," Visalli said. "We looked at this from a cost-benefit standpoint and it's a very small group of people affected by this."

Nearly 18,000 people in Delaware are infertile, according to RESOLVE, an infertility organization that runs support groups around the country for men and women struggling to conceive.