IVF - How do you afford it?

[briggsy's girl]

i agree it's worth shopping around for PHI Amy - i have changed my PHI to another provider simply because they cover an unlimited number of hospital admissions for IVF related procedures - some will restrict access after a certain number of attempts. given you're not looking at doing this for 12 months, and most of them have a minimum 12 month waiting period, it's worth asking about it now. an extra couple of dollars a week is worth it when you think you have to be admitted for EPU and for transfers so you have to pay for a bed both days (for like HALF AN HOUR on ET day!! lol)

[haleyscomet]

Ok so you know since you are already with a private health fund, HCF will not make you wait for anything you are already covered for with your current one. You may have to wait 12 months for IVF but you may not . I did find though once we thoroughly looked through all the private health funds we found HCF the best and we used iSelect. I would do it through iSelect, you can call them up too because they are completely nonbiased PLUS you get a free flight I think atm. When I joined last year we got a 10% voucher card, totally spewing they didnt have the flights back then lol. Good Luck!

[nic]

Amy, just remember that if you do need to go the IVF route, that your health fund, whoever you end up with, may change their policy too. We thought we were stuck when told IVF, because at the time our health fund had a waiting period of 2 years for IVF, then when I spoke to them it had only recently changed to a waiting period of 1 year thank god!

Don't forget to enquire about the little extras, like will they pay for some of the medication that may be used after a transfer (like pessaries) I had to stay on these till week 12 and it was $100 per fortnight, and my health fund paid for half it, every fortnight. I had other medication I was taking as well, but they didn't pay out on this as it didn't reach a minimum amount when I bought them.

We were also fortunate enough to have our health fund pay some money towards fuel costs (based on klms driven) and accommodation (though for this one, I needed a letter or something which I didn"t organise so we missed out there)
Though you may not need to travel for treatment like we did, so it probably won't matter (hopefully you won't need to head down the IVF path anyway)

There is a thread here somewhere, think it may be the IVF costs thread, that has posts saying what people got from their health funds in regards to IVF. Will see if I can find it for you

Nic

[Aimz]

Nic that sounds like an awesome health fund - and should we need to go down the IVF road we will need to travel (2hrs to Canberra). Would you be able to PM me the name of your health fund?? We are looking at changing.

[nic]

PM sent Amy

Nic

[Muppity]

Amy - on the SIVF web site they have a list of contracted funds. It is under the "how much will it cost" bit. May make your decision on who to change to a bit easier. I am with Medibank Private (and won't change for various other reasons) but it is going to take me about 6 weeks to get my PHI component back whereas apparently with the contracted ones they just take that amount out of the original payment (or something similar - I didn't ask too many questions as it didn't apply to me)

HTH

[Aimz]

Thanks for that M - I'll have a look on their website now.