Egg freezing can be an excellent choice if you want to postpone conception and plan to have children in your 40s or later. However, the procedure’s exorbitant cost may cause you to reconsider. Is egg freezing covered by insurance?
Although most infertility diagnostic and treatment costs are covered by health insurance, procedures such as egg freezing are rarely covered. This is because insurance companies consider egg freezing to be an optional procedure.
Let’s have a look at the price of egg freezing to see if it’s worthwhile.
Is egg freezing covered under insurance?
You are not alone if you are not yet ready to have a family and want to store your eggs for later usage. Today, a big number of women are using the egg freezing method to ensure that they can start a family when the moment is right for them. Before you go ahead and freeze your eggs, there are a few things to think about.
Cost
The cost of egg freezing is an essential consideration. Medication, treatment, and egg storage are all included in the total cost, which is not inexpensive. However, freezing your eggs can save you thousands of dollars in fertility treatment costs in the future. Because freezing eggs is such an expensive procedure, it’s crucial to know if you may get insurance coverage for it.
Is It Covered by Insurance?
The truth is that insurance rates vary depending on the payment method and the provider. However, oocyte cryopreservation, also known as egg freezing, is usually not fully covered by insurance. However, many insurance companies cover some aspects of this surgery. So, if you’re thinking about acquiring insurance for freezing eggs, you’ll need to figure out which aspects of the process are covered first and then do a cost-benefit analysis.
Cost-Benefit Ratio Analysis
The overall cost of the egg freezing technique, as well as the cost reimbursed by insurance, is compared to the procedure’s favorable feature in a cost-benefit ratio study. This will give you an excellent sense of how much money you’ll have to pay in this situation.
The Bottom Line
Your decision to freeze or not freeze your eggs should not be based solely on financial considerations. You’ll have to weigh the advantages of the procedure against the potential costs of fertility therapy in the future. Once you’ve figured out these details, you’ll be able to find an appropriate insurance company to assist you with egg freezing insurance.
Which insurance company covers egg freezing?
Blue Cross and Red Crescent Societies Blue Shield is one of the major insurance companies in the United States, and their customers are currently covered for egg freezing.
How much does it cost to freeze eggs 2020?
The cost of treatment and storage for egg freezing patients ranges from $30,000 to $40,000. This is determined by two key factors: the cost of each cycle, which ranges from $15,000 to $20,000, and the number of cycles each woman has (on average, 2.1).
The expense of medical treatment, medicine, and the cost of storing your frozen eggs are all essential line items on a per-cycle basis. Each varies depending on the clinic and the patient.
Is IVF covered by insurance?
Most health plans consider maternity and newborn care to be essential benefits, while infertility treatment is frequently not. Some insurance policies cover in vitro fertilization (IVF), but not the injections that women may also need. Other plans provide coverage for both. Some plans only cover a limited number of treatments. Furthermore, some insurance plans do not cover IVF at all.
How do people afford to freeze their eggs?
As a strategy to protect their fertility, an increasing number of women are opting to freeze their eggs. If you’ve looked into egg freezing, you’re probably aware that it’s not cheap. There’s a lot of information regarding the egg freezing procedure there, but not so much about how to pay for it.
Egg Freezing: How Much Does It Cost?
One of the queries you could have is, “How much does it cost to freeze your eggs?” The first phase of egg freezing, collecting and freezing your eggs, costs between $5,000 and $10,000 on average. However, there are extra expenditures such as medications (which stimulate your body to produce several eggs in a single cycle), storage (which keeps the eggs frozen), and in vitro fertilization (IVF) if you need to use your eggs to try to get pregnant later.
The overall expense of freezing your eggs and eventually using them to conceive can be well over $50,000. The cost will vary depending on your location, the number of rounds required to recover enough eggs, the number of years of storage, hormone expenditures, and whether you decide to proceed with IVF afterwards.
*If you are able to become pregnant naturally later, you may not need to use your frozen eggs for IVF.
Ways To Save On Egg Freezing
Take a look at your employee perks. Some employers cover the cost of egg freezing in part or in full.
Check with your health-care provider. Some health insurance policies cover costs associated with infertility, such as egg freezing.
Make a comparison. Even on the same street, clinic prices can vary greatly. You can even haggle on occasion!
Make many phone calls to different pharmacies. As previously stated, the hormones required for egg freezing might be costly. Varying pharmacies will have different pricing, so shop around and look into online pharmacies as well!
Donate some of your eggs to the cause. A special program at some clinics and egg cryobanks allows you to donate some of your eggs to a lady in need. In exchange, you can get a discount on services.
Ways to Get The Funds You Need For Egg Freezing
- Save! Examine your pay stub to see how much you can set aside each month for your egg freezing expenses. An auto-deduction might assist you in maintaining your savings discipline. You Need a Budget (YNAB) and Digit are two apps that can help you understand your budget and save automatically.
- Look into getting a loan. Some lending companies offer loans to people who are facing substantial medical bills, such as fertility-related bills. Keep an eye on the interest rates and costs.
- Use a credit card with a rewards program. Most fertility clinics accept credit cards because they recognize that some people cannot afford to pay in full up front. This can be a fantastic strategy to get a new credit card’s sign-up bonus. Points, cash back, or frequent flier miles can all be used as sign-up bonuses.
- Use CareCredit or another card with a 0% APR. Credit cards like CareCredit might offer 0% APR financing for a limited time, which can help you with the upfront costs of egg freezing. However, keep an eye on interest rates after the promotional period has ended, as they may jump drastically. If at all possible, pay off the bill during the 0% APR term.
- Consider enlisting the help of family and friends. Sites like GoFundMe and Indiegogo are excellent resources for sharing your story and soliciting donations from friends and family to help defray expenditures.
Is egg freezing expensive?
Reproductive medicine and healthcare advancements provide us more control over our reproductive health and allow us to work toward our fertility objectives on our own timetables. Egg freezing, a growingly popular method of fertility preservation, allows you to maintain the amount and quality of eggs you have now in the hopes of using them to conceive later in life. While egg freezing does not ensure a future pregnancy, it is a viable alternative however, like many other parts of pregnancy, birth, and parenthood, it is a costly medical operation. Health insurance, sadly, does not always cover it.
Knowing what to expect financially while freezing your eggs will help you plan ahead of time for those expenditures, as well as provide information on financial aid programs and other options for covering those fees.
Keep reading if you’re thinking of freezing your eggs to find answers to your questions about egg freezing prices, what factors affect them, and how you might be able to seek financial help. But first, here are the most important points to remember:
- Egg freezing (also known as oocyte cryopreservation) is a fertility preservation procedure that protects the quality of your eggs (as well as the amount of any eggs you’re able to harvest) for future usage while you’re still young.
- The cost of egg freezing varies depending on your clinic and region, but the treatment itself normally costs between $5,000 and $10,000 per cycle. Other costs to consider include medication (which can cost anywhere between $10,000 and $12,000 per cycle), storage fees (if not included in the procedure costs), donor sperm (if needed), and in vitro fertilization (IVF) if you decide to use the frozen eggs later in life (which can cost anywhere between $8,000 and $12,000).
- The cost of egg freezing depends on your age, clinic location, anti-Mullerian hormone (AMH) level, and the quantity of eggs retrieved in a single cycle.
- Only 19 states presently compel insurance companies to fund infertility treatments, but there are financial help options available.
- The number of eggs you’re able to retrieve has a big impact on the likelihood of one egg resulting in a live birth. If you freeze nine or more mature eggs, you have a 70% chance of having a live delivery if you’re under 35, and if you’re in your early 40s, you’ll need to freeze 28 or more eggs to have the same 70% chance of having a live birth.
How much does embryo freezing cost?
The technique of fertilizing eggs after retrieval and preserving them as embryos is known as embryo freezing.
PFCLA charges $9,000 for one cycle, $16,500 for two cycles, and $22,000 for three cycles for embryo freezing. These costs include the following:
- Testing may be reimbursed by your insurance prior to treatment. This can cost anywhere from $500 to $1,500.
- Insurance may also pay fertility medicines. This will set you back between $3,500 and $5,000.
- The cost of preimplantation genetic screening (PGS) is $5,000 for the first eight embryos and $250 for each extra embryo.
- The cost of an embryo transfer is determined by the quantity of transfers purchased. Intended parents should anticipate to pay roughly $4,500 plus excluding charges for one frozen embryo transfer.
Is freezing your eggs painful?
All patients will be sedated for around 20 minutes, resulting in a painless procedure. Patients may feel sore, achy, and cramping when they first wake up. Most people recover in a few days, while some may take up to a week.
How can I get insurance to cover IVF?
If your organization doesn’t already provide them, this may appear to be a risky step. Some employers, on the other hand, follow the advise of their insurance brokers and are unaware that they can ask brokers to include coverage for reproductive therapy. They might request that their broker:
- Employees can choose between two health plans. One provides IVF benefits, while the other does not.
- The more employees that contact their Human Resource Departments, the better companies will understand that the scope of coverage supplied should not be limited.
- Employers want to stay competitive, so they want to know which businesses provide coverage and what types of benefits they provide.
- Employers are either self-insured (benefits are managed by insurance companies, but the employer pays the claims) or fully insured (benefits are managed by insurance companies, but the employer pays the claims) (insurance companies manage benefits and pay the claims). When self-insured businesses learn about the cost reductions associated with providing benefits, they are driven to give IVF coverage.
Patients tend to transfer fewer embryos in an IVF round when the infertility benefits are plausible. A singleton pregnancy (from conception to birth) is predicted to cost $21,458, while twins cost $104,831 and triplets cost $407,199. In addition, there are cost reductions in mental health benefits. When companies learn that this could affect one out of every six employees, they take it more seriously.
How do you pay for IVF?
Here are some of the finest ways to pay for IVF treatments if you need them.
- A loan from a fertility professional. Who it’s best for: Those looking for a lender who works closely with their reproductive clinic.