Global Financial Crisis and your access to IVF/AC?

As most LTers will know, IVF/AC is a huge expense in our personal budget.

However, in these increasingly difficult economic times I wonder how it is influencing your thinking and perhaps your decisions regarding you access to assisted conception now and in the future.

I have provided a poll to get a sense of how people are travelling and whether you are feeling the pinch and how that is affecting your access to AC.

With IVF becoming such a big money making business and with treatment prices increasing every year by significant amounts, I also wonder what impact clinics are finding and how they are responding to it, if at all yet. Perhaps they will start to offer better deals, payment plans etc to ensure customers keep coming through their doors?

I hope you may share your experiences to date in the poll and in the thread.

Thanks for sharing that Dusty! im sure over the comming weeks my answer will change! it is not just AC payments but all the other things that we do to try to make it help, ap and np for example.

Dusty: I have been off with the fairies lately, where is the poll ? Can you give a link sweets ?

I just saw the poll ...... ohhhhhhhhh :doh:

Glad you are keeping me on my toes hun ;)

Loula : I agree totaly, it is ironic that loverly Dusty posted a poll today, when I posted earler in another thread, I was in shock at the price of meds to sustain an embryo transfer. I actually thought as I was typing we should send a petition of sorts, to the government to help us with the costs of ttc.

How long has medicare subsidised AC been in?

Glad you start this thread Dusty, I can't believe how expensive some the meds are. Lucrin is around $220 mark, which support for 1 cycle length, so its not too bad. I am about to start an Antagonist cycle, Organultran is $90 a shot, normally you will need at least 5, I know people who used 9 per cycle, imagine that, all these are totally out of pocket if you don't have private health insurance for extras.

I don't expect government to hand out money for me but at least drugs in needs for IVF cycle should be included and rebatable by medicare like everything else.

I can't believe the differences in costs per clinic!
and in the varying treatments for essencially the same process.

I had a natural cycle FET which essentially is:test blood for appropriate hormone levels x5days, take the vial out of storage and store at appropriate temp, look at embies to see if still ok. Stick them in me. Thats it but it cost $1650 of which I recieved $888.65 from medicare.

A friend will be having a FET but with hormone stim/support drugs either side of transfer but will be only out of pocket by $140/embie.

I therefore pay $481 more than her for no drugs.
Go figure that one!

The pricing won't effect our decision to go ahead with the one frostie we have left but I think it will force us to consider long and hard when we could afford to do another stim cycle if we need to.

Cuddlepie, it appears (from what I hear and read here) that clinics are pushing more out of pocket costs to us for drugs etc. When I started IVF everything was included in the price but it seems there are more drugs that have to be bought separately now.

Sazz, there sure does seem some big differences in prices between clinics. It isn't always that easy to shop around in rural and regional areas too or even swap FS in cities.

My big concern is that for those clinics that are owned by shareholders or private firms have to maximise their profits to benefit them. Hence potentially forcing prices up. See this article for an example.

With the Medicare safety net, clinics have been suspected of upping prices over the last few years knowing the government will pay 80% out of pocket costs above the threashold.

WLAB, I too am interested in knowing how long Medicare has funded IVF in Australia.

Dusty, I have no choice here in SA. It is repromed or nothing at all. My friend is accessing her stored embies in sydney, which is why the differences in prices.

You can see by my pricing in the other post that medicare did not cover 80% of the cost of our cycle. It was approximately half the total price that we recieved back. Repromed is privately owned these days.

Previous cycles involving drugs have had an all inclusive price for me except for a lab costing where semen analysis was done interstate. I havent had a stim cycle since april 07 though so things may be different here with that now too.

Our out-of-pocket costs may go up significantly if they take the safety net away from IVF - please see: https://www.bellybelly.com.au/forums...y-net-ivf.html

The government is considering making changes, one of which is excluding IVF from the safety net full stop (the other is means testing the safety net, which still would have a huge impact on the ability to afford IVF as it is so expensive).

It is so very important to express yourself to the elected officials. I read an article recently that people are used to venting online - in forums, comments to online newspapers all which has a purpose - BUT this has really been a disservice in terms of doing something that has impact because elected officials don't necessarily care about this - it's the direct letters and direct pleas that matter. I have never written a letter to a government official before, but this is just too important to say "well, others will do it" - the government needs to hear from as many people as possible. Don't think that we can't make a difference - if you go to the above thread, you will see where Dusty recalls other cuts to IVF being considered a few years ago and they weren't adopted because of the uproar - PLEASE EVERYONE, WRITE A LETTER - IT TAKES 15 MINUTES. We can't let the government take IVF out of the safety net.