Trying to identify the total cost of your fertility treatment can be a time consuming and confusing process. It’s best to get a quote before beginning treatment.
Whether you’re seeking out an egg donor, using a gestational carrier or doing PGD IVF, there are many financial programs available to help make your treatment more affordable.
Fertilization
IVF can be emotionally and financially stressful, which makes it important to break down costs before starting treatment. That way, you can decide whether to move forward with the treatment and make a financial plan.
The cost of fertilization treatments can vary significantly between clinics, so you’ll need to find one that offers competitive prices. For example, some clinics may offer discounted prices for certain patients.
In addition to the base fee for IVF, you’ll need to pay for other expenses like medications and monitoring. These can include oral fertility drugs, injectables (such as gonadotropins) and ultrasounds to measure follicle growth. These can add up to $3,000 per cycle.
Many patients will require more than one round of IVF. Fortunately, many IVF treatment centers offer financial assistance programs, which can help reduce the cost of IVF cycles. These programs can include grants, a bundled rate for a frozen embryo transfer and genetic testing, or low-cost loan options through partner financing companies.
Other treatment-related costs include intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) and preimplantation genetic testing (PGT). ICSI can increase the chances of fertilization, while PGT helps identify abnormalities in the embryos that are unlikely to result in a healthy pregnancy. The cost of these additional services can range from $1,000 to $2,000. Embryo freezing and yearly storage fees can add up to a few hundred dollars per cycle as well.
Ovarian Stimulation
As more people seek fertility treatment, clinics become busier and prices rise. That is why it’s important to find ways to reduce your costs before starting treatments. Several factors affect the cost of IVF treatments, including how many cycles you require and whether you use donor eggs or sperm. In addition, a wide variety of other procedures are often needed to complete IVF treatment.
The first stage of the IVF process is ovarian stimulation, where a person takes daily injectable hormone medications to encourage the growth of multiple follicles that contain eggs. The goal of ovarian stimulation is to retrieve as many eggs as possible during an IVF cycle. It is generally included in the base IVF fee of $9,000-$14,000.
Another component of IVF is the embryo transfer. During an embryo transfer, one or more fertilized eggs are placed in the uterus. The procedure is usually completed after 2-3 days (cleavage-stage embryos) or 5-6 days (blastocysts) of development. In some cases, a frozen embryo can be transferred instead of a fresh one.
Medications make up a significant percentage of the overall IVF cost, and they vary significantly by type and dosage. Luckily, there are options to lower medication costs, like seeking donated medications from other IVF patients, finding out if your clinic has package deals with specialty pharmacies, and buying your medications internationally. In addition, there are a number of different grants available to help offset the costs of IVF. Many of these are offered through private organizations or by the government and have different eligibility criteria, such as demonstrating financial need or living in a specific geographic area.
Egg Retrieval
When a woman undergoes ovarian stimulation, she takes injectable medications to develop multiple follicles that contain eggs. Once these mature, an egg retrieval is performed. During the procedure, a small amount of sedation is used to make the patient comfortable while the doctor uses a needle to collect the eggs from the follicles. Once the eggs are collected, they are combined with sperm to create embryos. Embryos are then either implanted into the woman’s uterus or frozen for later use.
Many IVF patients choose to have the embryos genetically tested before transferring them. This is known as preimplantation genetic testing or PGT. PGT can help ensure that the resulting pregnancy has a high chance of being healthy. It can also prevent embryos with chromosomal abnormalities from being transferred. PGT costs around $5,000 per cycle.
Some IVF clinics do not include the cost of fertility medications in their prices for egg retrieval and other IVF procedures. Instead, they may offer to provide them at an additional cost. When choosing a fertility clinic, it is important to consider this additional expense and whether or not it is an option that will fit with your financial goals and lifestyle. You should also ask your prospective clinics what services are included in their price and what is not. For example, some clinics may not provide monitoring for blood work, ultrasounds or surgeries performed elsewhere.
Opinions
Most patients will need to complete 2.3 – 2.7 cycles of IVF in order to get pregnant. This will cause total costs to increase by 10 – 15% each cycle. Typically, clinic reputation and success rates will influence the demand for services, driving prices higher. Additionally, the growing adoption of PGS genetic testing is also adding to IVF costs.
The availability of financial assistance programs can help to lower these costs. However, these programs are not available everywhere. Local differences in costs of living and operational expenses can also impact fertility treatment costs.
Some insurance providers are now offering fertility coverage through private health care plans and in some states, there are laws that require insurers to cover infertility treatments. This may be a good option for some. However, it is important to consider the cost and benefits of pursuing this route.
It is also worth noting that, even in countries with universal healthcare (e.g. Australia), there are still substantial out-of-pocket costs for fertility treatment. This is due to the fact that Medicare only subsidizes a limited number of IVF and ICSI cycles.
Some patients choose to seek out low cost clinics that offer IVF at a cheaper rate. These clinics might be more appealing to self pay patients, but they should not be the only option. The goal of IVF is to have a baby, so while cheaper options might be more affordable, they could delay or derail your path to parenthood.
