Update after health care reform passed: Even After Health Care Reform, Insurance Companies Don’t Have to Cover Infertility
It depends, according to this report by Sabrina Eaton in The Cleveland Plain Dealer.
During the election campaign, President Obama told Planned Parenthood that he supported expanding “reproductive services” and including them in his proposed reforms to the health care system.
But legislators in the House and Senate have not yet decided if the public option will be included in the bill they send to the President. And even if it is:
Health care experts say a revamped system is more likely to pay for birth control than high tech fertility treatments like in-vitro fertilization because it’s more common for insurance plans to cover birth control.
Let’s hope reproductive services are covered and that we do get the public option. Forcing private insurance companies to compete with the government’s public plan would encourage them to expand their coverage of fertility treatments, which are not covered by enough US private health insurance plans:
Infertility treatments are less commonly covered by insurance [than birth control services], although some plans cover surgery to clear blocked Fallopian tubes and prescription drugs to induce ovulation as part of their regular surgical and prescription drug coverage.The trade group for physicians who treat infertility — the American Society of Reproductive Medicine — estimates just 20 percent of insurance plans currently pay for high tech infertility treatments like in-vitro fertilization.
The group’s spokesman, Sean Tipton, says it’s too early to tell whether health care reform proposals will cover such fertility treatments. He expects Congress will avoid listing the procedures it wants covered, leaving the ultimate decisions to HHS.
“Who knows?” he said. “The bills have not gotten into that level of specificity.”
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Crossing fingers!
If you can't have a baby, it is NOT up to the government to get you pregnant. Adopt or foster. I don't want my tax dollars paying for your infertility issues. I have cancer, which is a LITTLE more important than whether or not you can breed. There are many more serious illnesses that should be addressed! Your idea that the American public is responsible for someone else's breeding issue is pathetically fantastic. Get a job and pay for insurance through your job and you can have all the IVF you want.
If you truly care about this nation, and believe Obama's healthcare plan is the best option, how can you even worry about banging out a kid when there are so many, many more people out there with so many more HORRIBLE health issues that need to be takien care of—life and death issues, not "boohoo/sob-sob, I can't be a mommy." Selfish Yuppie!
You obviously don’t know what it is like to have fertility problems, most of us who do, have had several miscarriages some at 6,7 & 8 months. Maybe the pain of loosing a child is not important to you, but there is validity and importance in getting help to concieve and to support a life beginning to end just like it is important to preserve the life of the sick. My insurance does cover cancer and i don’t need it fortunately. The high cost of our insurance premiums is in part due to the numerous conditions it covers one of which is cancer, therefore your tunnel vision opinion on the coverage of infertility is unfounded and selfish. you can’t catrgorize a group of people and call them yupies. Just like cancer patients are not the sole culprits of their disease and are respected and are not called names for trying to get help.
SO you are OK with them making you pay to KILL a baby (btw that’s why it impossible to adopt) but you are NOT OK with them helping people have one of their own. YOU MAKE ME SICK!! What do you know you twisted little killer???!!! YOU can LEAVE THE USA AND GO TO GOVERNMENT DEPENDENT NATION YOU LITTLE DEPENDENT!! Go get a job, a life and do some thing ON YOUR OWN FOR ONCE YOU LITTLE WIMP!!
I should clarify that… That should say so why is it fair for the government to have to pay for PARENTS of children who 9 times out of 10 don’t deserve them(the kids)and stay on welfare because they are too lazy to work?
I don't think that the gov should pay for any treatments that help someone have a baby, just like how they shouldn't pay for abortions – both are a choice!! If someone is so needy that they can't have a kid the natural way, then adopt!!!!
WHAT DO YOU KNOW? So happens loser that I had a tumor in that area and if I didn’t get the help that was needed then I never would have known. You are a selfish greedy little loser that can’t take care of yourself so you need the Government to do it for you, you little WUSS!! Everything was just fine until you selfish, greedy little WIMPY, do it for me Mr. Government because I am too weak to do it on my own loser liberals came into play. A person who is ill and can’t have a baby is NOT needy, a liberal that can’t keep her legs together until they are married IS. Get a clue on what is needy and what is not. Obama care supporters ARE needy. And we can’t adopt…liberals that can’t handle having a baby KILL THEM!!
1. Conference Name:
The First International Congress on Global Reproductive Tourism March 25-28, 2010, Vienna, Ausria
3. General details: (Please specify all the relevant information we need)
Reproductive tourism is a relatively new phenomenon that occurs when aspiring parents travel from their home country in which advanced reproductive technologies (ART) are expensive and legally awkward to nations where the procedures are cheaper and legally more obtainable.
The aim of this conference will be to discuss the reasons behind the rapid increase in reproductive tourism, as well as outline its professional, ethical, legal and economic consequences. This will be discussed by experts who will address the current concerns raised by this new trend, as well as share their accumulating experience meeting with the needs of the international patient and the limitations set by mounting national regulatory restrictions.
The participants in this conference will gain updated knowledge on:
Why has reproductive tourism become such a popular option?
The need to protect the reproductive rights of patients in various countries.
Improving local access to advanced reproductive care in all countries.
Advancing ART regulation under international consensus.
Affordability versus quality assurance in global ART.
Means of promoting and marketing reproductive care services.
Ethical aspects of international travel searching for ART.
Worldwide gamete donation: fulfilling an undeniable need or a form of organ trafficking?
Cross border gestational surrogacy: providing opportunity or exploitation of the poor.
Legal aspects of ART in foreign countries.
Ethnic needs of immigrants and genetic testing.
Reproductive rights of non married and same sex patients.
Safety and technical aspects of long-distance shipping of fresh and frozen gametes and embryos.
Wow! That would be so useful to those couples that wanted to have a baby. Not all couples around the country have the chance to cure that and not all couples experience this.
Anonymous said…
If you can't have a baby, it is NOT up to the government to get you pregnant. Adopt or foster. I don't want my tax dollars paying for your infertility issues. I have cancer, which is a LITTLE more important than whether or not you can breed. There are many more serious illnesses that should be addressed! Your idea that the American public is responsible for someone else's breeding issue is pathetically fantastic. Get a job and pay for insurance through your job and you can have all the IVF you want.
If you truly care about this nation, and believe Obama's healthcare plan is the best option, how can you even worry about banging out a kid when there are so many, many more people out there with so many more HORRIBLE health issues that need to be takien care of—life and death issues, not "boohoo/sob-sob, I can't be a mommy." Selfish Yuppie!
ASSHOLE! You appreantly have NO IDEA what it's like to want children and can't have them. How it significant;y impacts your life and attitude….JUST AS YOUR CANCER. In fact it is statistically proven that infertility causes the same amount of depression as a person living with AIDS. Not Cancer, but AIDS. Not to say you are sick and don't deserve treatment and coverage, but who the fuck are you to say that those with infertility dont!
To the arrogant poster with cancer: aleast your insurance will pay for your treatment. But odds are you will have to deal with cancer for the rest of your life wich sucks, and for that I’m sorry. Infertility for many is not a choice just as you probally chose not to have cancer. Treatment for cancer is expensive just as many of the ART therapies to treat the infertile couple are expensive. I hope that you have children of your own weather thru your own biology or thru a sucessful adoption. Think about it for a second how would you feel deep in your soul if you desperately wanted a baby and could not conieve one? Every expectant mom with that glow of pregnancy is all to often a reminder to the couple who can’t concieve that they are being denied something so basic, their children.
Adoption is a solution for many and for a long time it ws the only option to build a family. However, adoption involves many steps and it requires a very detailed financial history as well to assure that you can properly support the child. Immagine if being fiscally sound for the rest of your life was a requirement for parenthood? I know many who have biological offspring of their own and they are down right poor, they make enough to get by on and some even have a small stash for when things get tough. These familes would be denied adoption because they don’t appear to be financially sound.
ART and the big one that cost the most next to hiring a surrogate, is IVF wich can cost up to $15K a menstral cycle. Many couples have mortgaged their homes, worked several jobs and scrimped and saved to afford even the most basic IUI therapy. Immagine if your chemo, radiation and drug therapy was not covered? you would need an awful lot of money just to make it past a year of finding the invasive tumor. And there are no garantees with IVF either just as there are no garantees that your cancer treatment will ulimately save you from an earlier then expected departure.
yes I think the government should help someone who is trying everything and can not have child. The government has a duty to help such person at least for 2 to 3 test.
Infertility is a very major problem worldwide and should be taken seriously by Governments and the healthcare system. Best wishes. james
I would certainly rather our tax money go for people to have children vs aborting babies. The attitude that some of you have could apply to any handicap. If you want to walk, why should the govt pay for it?? If you don’t have use of one leg, not our problem! If you have cancer from smoking, tough it is your on fault. You had to have a masectomy, no reconstruction–Where would this end?? Everyone should be made whole if possible and this includes infertility.