A Baby in the Ballpark: Talking Money

Stepping up to the plate takes courage when fertility troubles loom over your romantic life, certainly, but will the hefty price cause only more frustration? Here are some statistics and estimates for you and your partner to mull over before bunting the ball or taking a full swing.

Look Beyond the Standard IVF Rates

The standard IVF package offered by GYNEM costs between €3,200-3,900 including medications, but signing up right away for the optimized laboratory package would add an additional €1,000 to the bill. Adding more than a third of the base fee for extra assistance may not seem necessary at first, but it could easily help you save in the long-run if you might need to come in a second or, yikes, a third time.

GYNEM boasts that every second couple achieves pregnancy and there is a reason for that.

Let’s backtrack and remind ourselves of what, firstly, IVF entails. You take medication to bring several eggs to maturation so that your doctor can surgically remove these eggs and plan a meet-and-greet between eggs and sperm in the laboratory. Your doctor then places one or more embryos directly into your uterus and hopefully, with also the help of additional medication, at least one embryo will implant into the lining of your uterus.[1]

Analyses may lead to extra costs. For example, if it’s determined in the spermiogram that your partner’s sperm count is low or often immobile, the fertility treatment would most likely lead to sperm extraction and the use of a stimulant (SpermMobil) to identify the healthiest sperm within that sample.

If you’ve had implantation issues, you should consider asking for the EmbryoScope incubator. Taking the euphemism of a bun in the oven almost literally here, if you place dough into the oven prior to reaching the necessary pre-heated level, you’re going to miss the essential oven-spring. So, think of that oven-spring as the implantation of selected embryos into your uterus. You want the implantation procedure at the most optimal time of development for the lining of the uterus and with the strongest embryos.

What if you go through multiple cycles of treatment and want sperm frozen for a year? Need your eggs put into cryostorage? Each year of cryostorage beyond what’s included in your package costs €200.

IVF Refunds

GYNEM has a nonrefundable deposit of €1,000 in case of complete cancelation, but there are also a number of refunds available if issues arise throughout the treatment process. Here are some situations that may allow you to get some money back:

• I went through the egg retrieval procedure but no eggs could be collected
• There was no suitable embryo for transfer after the embryo culture

Great IVF Savings

In the United States, quotes on the average cost of basic IVF treatment range between $12,000 and 15,000 per cycle but couples have also recorded even higher initial costs despite accruing relatively lower fees for additional cycles. Why is that? Generally, freezing extra eggs will help keep your costs low since there’s no need to undergo the procedure to extract fresh eggs a second time.[2][3][4]

Regardless of your total budget, there’s one obvious fact here and it’s that GYNEM can give you analyses, advice and extra assistance at a price that’s still well under what might only get you basic treatment in the United States.

Sources:

[1] Parenthood, Planned. “What Is In-Vitro-Fertilization (IVF)?” Planned Parenthood, www.plannedparenthood.org/learn/pregnancy/fertility-treatments/what-ivf.

[2] Gurevich, Rachel. “How Much Does IVF Really Cost?” Edited by Leyla Bilali, Verywell Family, About Inc, 5 Mar. 2020, www.verywellfamily.com/how-much-does-ivf-cost-1960212.

[3] Gurevich, Rachel. “Ways to Pay Less (and Get Cash) for IVF Treatment.” Verywell Family, About Inc, 27 Feb. 2020, www.verywellfamily.com/pay-less-and-get-cash-for-ivf-treatment-1960041.

[4] Klitzman, Robert. “How Much Is a Child Worth? Providers' and Patients' Views and Responses Concerning Ethical and Policy Challenges in Paying for ART.” PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, 16 Feb. 2017, journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0171939.