Insurance and fertility
June 19th, 2007 by Kishore
Almost no insurance coverage exists for fertility treatments, even if your plan covers obstetrics. However, a new bill in front of Congress aims to change that. Rep. Anthony Weiner introduced legislation a couple years ago regarding infertility coverage. The bill is now being resubmitted to Congress.
A few highlights of the bill include:
* The bill acknowledges in its opening lines that infertility affects approximately 10% of the reproductive-aged population; that the majority of insurance plans do not provide coverage for infertility treatment; and that “a fundamental part of the human experience is fulfilling the desire to reproduce.”
* The bill defines infertility as “a disease or condition that results in the abnormal function of the reproductive system,” and encompasses not only those of us who can’t conceive within a year, but those who can’t carry a pregnancy to term.
* The bill calls for coverage of up to four IVF retrievals, or, “if a live birth follows a completed oocyte retrieval, then at least 2 more completed oocyte retrievals shall be covered, with a lifetime cap of six retrievals.”
* The bill’s definition of ART includes IVF, GIFT, ZIFT, embryo cryopreservation, egg or embryo donation, and surrogate birth.
RESOLVE has created an online form letter that can be sent to your congressman to support the bill.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 19th, 2007 at 11:24 pm and is filed under Fertility. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
June 20th, 2007 at 8:16 am
Makes me happy to see such a bill in the works.
Joy and I paid for her ovary transplantation from donations from friends and money we had. When all said and done it cost about 15k. We are lucky that some of the tests and pre-op/post-op procedures did get covered.
I understand that the procedure that Joy had is still experimental and that is one of the main reasons why it was not covered. Seeing this bill come to light though gives me great hope that insurance companies will have to pay more attention to the needs of this group of people.
thanks kish