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Back in graduate school, we paid a yearly fee to the graduate student union which funded a plethora of projects including the graduate student newspaper. Though I went to graduate school in Massachusetts, the front page article of the weekly newspaper was usually inexplicably about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict arguing in favour of Israelis moving out of the Middle East entirely. Week after week, while there were plenty of newsworthy things happening in the college town and on campus, these topics were eschewed for Middle East politics. And the whole thing made me beyond uncomfortable.
I made an appointment with the Dean of Graduate Students and she patiently listened to why I might feel uncomfortable with my graduate student dollars supporting a newspaper that advocated the extermination of...myself. And then she explained that she cannot control what the editor of the newspaper chooses to print, though the university did end up establishing an anti-Semitism task force to deal with the fallout from the articles.
I then expressed my Plan B, which was to stop paying my yearly fee to the graduate student union. It made perfect sense--I didn't want to support the newspaper, so I would pull my funding from the organization that supports the newspaper. Except that it didn't work that way. It turned out that out of the $100 fee, under a penny went to fund the newspaper and the rest of that fee went to support great programs such as rape/crisis hotline and financial aid. Pulling my penny wasn't going to sink the newspaper that included such scintillating headlines as "Death to Israel" but protesting our graduate student fee or refusing to pay it was going to affect a lot of other programs.
It was my first life lesson in the idea that simple solutions sometimes don't take into account all the facts.
With health care reform being a hot topic, the discussion of whether it is cost-effective for insurance companies to fund IVF is being debated within and outside the US.
According to Resolve, the National Infertility Association, "
Some insurance companies and employers incorrectly believe that adding infertility coverage to a health benefit package leads to increased premiums. In fact, states that have passed laws requiring coverage of infertility treatment actually have reduced overall health care costs."
The reason being that those with insurance coverage tend to treat their infertility based on the best course of treatment rather than first trying procedures, surgeries, and medications covered by insurance. It saves money to bypass expensive attempts that have a lower success rate based on the reason for the person's infertility. Coverage of expensive procedures such as IVF, means that those utilizing the procedure can make sensible decisions such as transferring fewer embryos and therefore lowering costs on the back-end including the financial burden associated with premature birth (which is often the case with multiples). According to Resolve, "In states with full coverage for infertility treatment, multiple birth rates (twins, triplets, etc.) are lower than in states with no infertility coverage. (New England Journal of Medicine, August 2002)."
Think about it this way: would you rather have your insurance dollars going towards a $10,000 IVF cycle or a $150,000 hospital bill for a three week NICU stay for premature triplets?
Barb Collura, the executive director of Resolve says,
RESOLVE: The National Infertility Association has known for years that insurance coverage for IVF treatments is not only the right thing to do, but it will dramatically reduce and perhaps even eliminate higher order multiples as a result of IVF treatments. Study after study shows that when you take the cost issue of an IVF cycle out of the equation, patients make better decisions about the number of embryos to transfer, thereby reducing the risk of a multiple birth. A recent study by Shady Grove Fertility on eSET (elective Single Embryo Transfer) among their Shared Risk patients confirms this – patients make better decisions when they are not pressured with paying out of pocket for every IVF cycle. If you only have $10,000 to spend, as a patient you want to get the most for your money, which does not always lead to a healthy pregnancy, mom, or baby.
Yet even with these stark financial facts on the table, if you take the comments and blog posts popping up about insurance companies covering IVF, it appears as if the average, vocal, non-infertile man or woman would rather pay
