I’ve been reading the books I have for whatever sections they include on infertility treatments. It got me wondering about costs of these things – one of the books lists IVF as costing between $6000 to $10000 per retrieval (which also lists a success rate of about 26%). Gulp. So I looked it up online. Here’s what I found:
MASSACHUSETTS
1987
Mass Gen Laws Ann. Ch. 175, Section 47H, ch. 176A, Section 8K, ch.176B, Section 4J, ch 176G, Section 4, and 211 CMR 37.00
DEFINITION OF INFERTILITY/PATIENT REQUIREMENTS
Infertility means the condition of a presumably healthy individual who is unable to conceive or produce conception during a period of one year.
COVERAGE
* All insurers providing pregnancy-related benefits shall provide for the diagnosis and treatment of infertility including the following:
o artificial insemination;
o IVF;
o GIFT;
o sperm, egg and/or inseminated egg procurement and processing, and banking of sperm or inseminated eggs, to the extent such costs are not covered by the donor’s insurer, if any;
o ICSI;
o ZIFT
* Insurers shall not impose any exclusions, limitations or other restrictions on coverage of infertility drugs that are different from those imposed on any other prescription drugs.
* The law does not limit the number of treatment cycles and does not have a dollar lifetime cap.
EXCEPTIONS
* Insurers are not required to cover (but are not prohibited from covering) experimental infertility procedures, surrogacy, reversal or voluntary
[RESOLVE]
That’s great! This does mean that the insurance is not required to cover anything until it’s been a year, not so great as we want to get his sperm analysis done within the next couple of months. I’ll have to hunt down more information on that. But this is great news that if we ever get to the point that we need to consider something high-tech it will be covered by our insurance.