Hi Kimmi,

The best thing to do is to call you IVF clinic for clarity and then check with yoru health fund if they have a gap agreement with yoru clinic, if not switch to another health fund (They will recognize any waiting time that you've already had)

As BW says the only time when you need private health care rebates is for EPU = Egg collection and ET= Embryo transfer, with my clinic these procedures cost $800 for EPU and $600 for ET, all other costs are outpatient costs so not covered by hospital insurance. Extras private health cover is useful if you want to do acupuncture and for any medication you might have to buy if you don't get them from your clinic.

Also when I had my first cycle I only didn't get anything of these costs back even though I had full health cover, first of all I had a $500 excess so that was deducted from the benefit and then my health fund did not have a gap agreement with the clinic so they only rebated a small part of the costs which was eaten up by the excess.

If you make an appointment with the clinic now you porbably have a waiting time for the doctor's appointment, then there may be some investigations which can take some weeks you may need to go on the pill for four weeks and then cycle takes three weeks, so depending on the waiting time for the doctor's appointment if you make an appointment now, EPU may not even be before May anyway.

Hope this helps,

Sara