Infertility is quite a distressing condition. It can take a significant toll on you, both mentally and physically. But the good news is that reproductive technology advancements have made it possible to fight it out and achieve desired results to extend your family.
IVF today is a familiar word in almost every household. In this treatment, an egg combines with sperm outside of the body in vitro. However, the IVF cost is slightly high, and only around 5% of the couples can go for it. Fortunately, there are other less expensive alternatives, such as getting an insemination at home or getting intrauterine insemination.
Now, you must be inquisitive to know the costs of IVF. But for that, you need to know first what the IVF procedure involves.
What is IVF?
IVF is the process of combining eggs and sperm in a lab artificially outside the body. Once the embryos are formed, they are taken and put inside the uterus. It is an intricate and pricey procedure. But it is also noted that IVF and similar techniques have produced more than 2,00,000 babies to date.
The Cost of IVF
The IVF cost depends on several factors like eggs (donor, frozen, or fresh) or geographic locations.
The average cost varies from $ 10,000 to $ 15,000. This includes the costs for retrieving the eggs, inseminating with the sperms, and their insertion into the uterus. The costs of blood tests, ultrasounds, anesthesia, embryo storage, and other services required to conduct the procedure safely are also included.
At this point, couples may have to go for genetic testing that screens for chromosomal defects.
This test helps doctors to select the healthiest embryos of the batch to be inserted into the uterus. This also lets you see the gender of the baby. Now, if you choose this, you can easily add up several thousand dollars more to the cost.
Here are some of the factors affecting the cost of IVF treatment.
Factors Determining the IVF Cost
Using Donor Eggs –
Usually, the cost of the procedure is lesser than that of the donor eggs. This is primarily because the eggs do not need to retrieve eggs from the ovaries. Nevertheless, you will spend anywhere from $25,000 to $30,000 in total.
Using Frozen Embryos –
When you are using the frozen embryos, either from the donor or yourself, you skip one part of the IVF process, which derives eggs from the ovary with the needle and ultrasound imaging. Thus, IVF with embryo prices is much lower – the range is between $3000 and $5000. In this case, remember that you may already have paid for freezing and storing the eggs.
Assisted Hatching –
This is used to help those with poor prognoses. At the initial stage of development, an embryo consists of a membrane known as the zona pellucida. The embryo must break through the protein layers to get inserted into the uterine lining. The embryologist uses micromanipulation techniques under the microscope to create a tiny hole in the layer known as zona pellucida. It is supposed to boost the implantation. This is a process that is charged separately.
Surrogacy –
When you go for surrogacy, the couple needs to invest in legal fees and surrogate payments apart from the IVF cost. The range is between $50k and $100 k.
Intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) –
The doctor can insert the sperms (if a man’s sperms have low mobility) into the eggs directly with the ICSI process. This is going to cost around $1000-$2500.
Does Your Insurance Cover the IVF Cost?
With such high costs, IVF can make you wonder if the process is covered by insurance. The answer is not straightforward. Most of the insurance companies won’t offer assistance. Some can, however, offer partial or full costs for the IVF process, medication, and infertility diagnosis.
You also check with the fertility clinic’s financial plans that you chose to cover the IVF cost. Some clinics also offer refundable plans that permit paying for multiple cycles of IVF upfront. If not even a single cycle is successful, some amount of the refund is rewarded.
