Family-Friendly Legislation

In addition to being a strain on marriages and sanity, infertility places an enormous financial burden on individuals and couples who are trying to conceive. Average costs of one cycle of in vitro fertilization are around $10,000, while using third party reproductive techniques such as egg donation can easily reach into the $30,000 range – for each attempt.

Unless you have a fabulous insurance plan which covers fertility treatments (they are rumored to exist) you can count on paying out of pocket for any and all expenses related to your reproduction.

But wait, there’s hope.

The Family Building Act of 2007 would require coverage for the treatment of infertility in group health plans. HR 2892 states:

(1) Infertility is a disease affecting more than 6,000,000 American women and men, about 10 percent of the reproductive age population.

(2) Recent improvements in therapy make pregnancy possible for more couples than in past years.

(3) The majority of group health plans do not provide coverage for infertility therapy.

(4) A fundamental part of the human experience is fulfilling the desire to reproduce.

Hard to disagree with any of that, but I was shocked at the numbers. Six million?

I read through the bill in search of the catch or the devil hiding in its detail and darned if I could find one. Other than restricting the number of oocyte retrievals and requiring that the treatment is deemed “non-experimental,” the bill is incredibly clear and inclusive.

Which is why I am doubtful that it will pass without some serious grassroots (that’s you and me) advocacy.

Case in point: Here in Pennsylvania, there is a piece of legislation that would require coverage for therapies related to Autism Spectrum Disorders in children. ASDs by most accounts affect 3.4 out of every 1,000. That’s 0.3%. And there is tremendous opposition by both insurance companies and business groups that are already calculating increased premiums they would have to pay for something that would affect 0.3% of the population. My head starts clicking imagining their calculators working overtime attempting to ascertain the fiscal impact of incredibly expensive fertility treatments that over 6 million Americans could feasibly demand covered by their insurance.

Best believe I would be first in line.