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Priced Out of Family

Facing the High Cost of Infertility Treatments

By Sue Marquette Poremba

Making a baby is supposed to be a pleasurable experience. If pregnancy doesn't come quickly, there might be some stress involved, but for the most part, it happens naturally and privately. That being said, approximately 17 percent of married women won't become pregnant naturally.

Rebecca Macdonald of Redondo Beach, Calif., and her husband tried to get pregnant for two years before asking to be referred to a fertility specialist. "We paid about $4,000 before deciding to choose in vitro fertilization," she says. "This included the office co-pays, prescriptions for Clomid, pregnancy tests, fertility monitors, labs and a surgery." Macdonald and her husband were extremely lucky – a month before they were scheduled to begin in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatments, they were pregnant.

Macdonald estimates that IVF would have cost $11,000. The cost played a major role in their decision to try other options before IVF. "We don't make a lot of money, and we really wanted to own a home," she says. With the help of a flexible spending plan at work, they were able to set aside $5,000, and both sets of parents and some close friends pitched in additional funds.

Thanks to advances in science, infertile couples like the Macdonalds have options available to them. But these options are expensive, costing tens of thousands of dollars, and doctors want to be paid in full at the time of treatment. Couples who could otherwise afford to raise a child are finding themselves priced out of the chance to conceive.

Without outside assistance, only the wealthiest couples would be able to afford IVF, and unfortunately, insurance coverage is sporadic. Only 12 states mandate some coverage for fertility treatments, says Brette Sember, family law attorney and author of The Infertility Answer Book (Sourcebooks, 2005): Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Montana, New York, Ohio, Rhode Island and Texas.

Dr. Lee Hickok, of Pacific NW Fertility in Seattle, says that the medications used to increase estrogen levels or trigger ovulation can be up to one third of the cost of fertility treatment. "The remaining fees are for procedures such as lab work, monitoring the patient, frequent blood work and harvesting eggs," he says.

Want to see more?

• The Price of Parenthood: 4 Steps to Financing Fertility
• Dollars and Sense: Affording Infertility Treatment
• The Overseas Connection: A Trip Across the Ocean May Solve Fertility Problems
• Talk about it!