Well, some interesting viewpoints, and I'm not sure where I sit. I am sitting here with my adorable little IVF baby of 15 months, and am so thankful we had that option. It was a very difficult several years as we tried to have kids, and it was worth every penny. We were also fortunate that we had only just recently gotten to a place financially where it wasn't a significant burden. But we have seen many people who must make significant sacrifices to come up with the money (debt), and others who are just plain unable. It is a $10 000 lottery ticket.
So maybe I am biased because we used the service, maybe because we had the money so it wasn't a hardship, or maybe because I am generally a conservative.
No funding since it isn't a required procedure? I'll buy that. The hypocrisy though vs things that are covered like abortion, or sports related injuries (all done by choice)--also good points.
That argument about IVF parents generally being older which is the problem, and they made those choices--one of the worst in the thread. Factually incorrect and without merit.
I'll have to keep thinking about which side of this I am on.
The Following 4 Users Say Thank You to Ryan Coke For This Useful Post:
That's a very loose definition of discrimination... and even if it is discrimination, it's the kind of descrimination I support. Democracy means you can't just opt out of the things you don't believe in.
I dont think it is. I think it should be a tax payer's right to ensure they are not financially supporting something that is instrinsically against their beleifs.
I'm not saying every Tom Dick and Harry can just say "I dont want an overpass in the south, so I want a tax rebate", I am just saying that if it is truly against your religion to provide any kind of facilitation to something, then your freedom of religion is bein infringed upon.
I guess the real point I am getting at, is that it just seems like when party X's rights and freedoms are protected, it always seems to infringe on party Y's.
Party X: "I have the right to carry a religious knife"
Party Y: "I have the right to be secured from weapons on an airplane"
Party X: "I have the right to marry my homosexual partner"
Party Y: "I have the right to refuse to marry you in my church"
Party X: "I have the right to smoke inside a pub"
Party Y: "I have the right to breathe clean air inside a pub"
Maybe these arent the most bulletproof examples, but I hope you can kind of see where I am coming from.
Last edited by alltherage; 07-27-2010 at 04:21 PM.
Truth of it is if the public system isn't going to fund IVF, or any other procedure for that matter, private clinics should be allowed to be setup.
And you should be able to buy some sort of private insurance plan, if there is one offered, for these various procedures.
IVF insurance? What? Do you buy it when you are 12 in case you find out you are unable to conceive at 20? Or is someone trying to back-door the "we need more private insurance!" rhetoric into a thread?
I'll have to keep thinking about which side of this I am on.
Since almost half of the posters in this thread have said that people that would want IVF should adopt, can I ask why you choose to go the IVF route rather than adoption? Is it the desire to pass on your own genes?
Someone mentioned earlier in the thread that you can get some kind of insurance that will help pay for the procedure.
It just seems odd. It would seem like finding you have been robbed, going out and buying house insurance, and then filing a claim. Before I could buy life insurance I had to be tested for various diseases and grilled about pre-existing conditions. How could they check if you had been trying for 2 years to get pregnant?
Someone mentioned earlier in the thread that you can get some kind of insurance that will help pay for the procedure.
I mentioned that some heath care plans do cover meds, but that are just average blanket insurance policies that you are covered under through work, like GWL or SunLife, etc. I am not aware of any specifically for IVF.
Adoptions aren't always a 100% guarantee either. I know of a couple in Ontario who adopted and during the waiting period (one month in Ontario) the birthmom changed her mind and took the baby back. $20 000 down the drain.
Since almost half of the posters in this thread have said that people that would want IVF should adopt, can I ask why you choose to go the IVF route rather than adoption? Is it the desire to pass on your own genes?
Not that big an issue for me (passing on my own genes), but I know for others there is truth to that. For us, we were certainly talking about adoption and had begun looking into it. I have nothing against adopting and in fact it can be a wonderful option.
On of the problems we found in our initial research into adoption is that it is not easy to get a healthy baby. You can get older kids easier, but that wasn't what we were looking for. For babies, many have a variety of physical issues (FAS or other substance abuse related issues). Fact is there isn't a big supply of well balanced teenage Moms that take good care of themselves during pregnancy and then make the challenging decision of giving the baby up for adoption--many adoptive babies come from less than healthy well adjusted families.
And for the ones that do come from an ideal scenario, then they tend to be 'open' adoptions now. So you pay a bunch of money (my wife just informed me it would've been more than IVF), then go on a waiting list, and hope eventually a Mom decides she wants you to adopt her baby, but also wants some sort of regular contact. It has many upsides, but obviously comes with its fair share of baggage as well.
My point is it isn't like getting a dog from the pound; there just isn't a large supply of healthy baby's and one just has to make the decision to adopt one of them. On the other hand, if you are interested in older children, or are prepared for the challenge of dealing with mental and physical issues, or going to a third world country, then it is easier---but still nothing really easy about it.
We were at a stage where we were debating a 2nd round of egg retrieval, vs going down the adoption path. Both are long and often full of heartache and disappointment. Fortunately we didn't have to make the decision when my wife got pregnant with our little girl, who has turned out to be more adorable than I ever could've imagined.
At any rate, I think IVF has as much merit as many things that are funded, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it should be. Right now there is a great foundation (Generations of Hope) that fund-raises in order to help couples that can't afford it, maybe the best solution is to see them get some more government funding to do what they already do.
The Following 5 Users Say Thank You to Ryan Coke For This Useful Post:
I don't have any kids, yet all my life I have paid taxes that in part went to help support other peoples kids.... whether it be towards a child tax credit, school taxes, etc.
My wife and I can't have children. We are going to adopt.... a dog. It will cost us $1000. The dog will improve the quality of our life immensely and hopefully the dog will become a contributing member of society... but then again who can say for sure how the dog will turn out?
I think society should pay for my dog. Its only fair. Its my turn now.
Ah yes, the token "I have absolutely no clue what I am talking about and am unable to backup my stance on this, so I am going to make fun of other people's misfortune by using a ridiculous example" post.
Stay classy.
Back on topic - I like the idea of using a government funded foundation like Generations of Hope to decide who gets subsidized and by how much. They have a fairly intense screening procedure and would most likely do a better job of keeping the overhead to a minimum.
I think we should wait and see how it works out in Quebec before rushing to judgments. The reason they are funding IVF (or at least one of the reasons) is that they expect in the long term it will actually save the health system money. If it does, then it makes sense to fund it; that's the sort of outside-the-box thinking we need to help get our health costs under better control, with the extra benefit of increasing our birth rate a bit to help prevent our working vs. retired population balance from getting too much worse. I'm not totally convinced it will save the system money in the long run if it means a bunch of people who wouldn't otherwise be getting IVF take advantage of the government funding - but no one can say for sure until someone tries it.
If it does turn out to save the health system money, then I'd be all for funding it, but with restrictions (e.g. limit of 2 children, age restrictions, and preferably at least partial payment by the couple to weed out people who financially aren't capable of providing for children).
According to StatsCan, Quebec has a birthrate of about 1.13% (table 1, table 2). Somehow I think their funding of this initiative has more to do with them wanting more Quebecois babies than anything else. Their death rate is only 30k lower than their annual birth rate, as a province. And yet their population grows by at least 75K per year(3). This policy has been enacted to ensure that the true Quebecois aren't out bread/immigrated by fools who don't understand the need for a French culture.
I'd also like to mention that waiting and watching to see if the Quebecois have it right is ridiculous; it would take almost a full generation to see their fruits ripen. We need to have more decisive on healthcare now, not 20 years from now.
I honestly think it's time for a full and open evaluation of the system we have in place vs. other systems that seem to operate fluently in a dual mode.
I don't want an American style system, but I don't think that our purported single tier system is good value for the money we spend on it. It's time to analyze what works elsewhere and why and what doesn't work here and why. And once that's done it's time to start a bi-tier or multi-tier program that works for as many of us as possible. There are ways of letting quality doctors run private clinics and work for hospitals at the same time. And there are ways of making this change beneficial to both users and providers.
We just need a government with the balls (seats) to stand up and get the ball rolling.
As far as it goes I'm against funding IVF publicly unless it's streamlined and efficient.... I have been half convinced by some of the posters in this thread of the value of this procedure, but if it's coming at the expense of things that are IMO the basis of our health care system then no, you can rot.
Last edited by simonsays; 07-28-2010 at 10:11 PM.
The Following User Says Thank You to simonsays For This Useful Post:
I don't have any kids, yet all my life I have paid taxes that in part went to help support other peoples kids.... whether it be towards a child tax credit, school taxes, etc.
My wife and I can't have children. We are going to adopt.... a dog. It will cost us $1000. The dog will improve the quality of our life immensely and hopefully the dog will become a contributing member of society... but then again who can say for sure how the dog will turn out?
I think society should pay for my dog. Its only fair. Its my turn now.
Well there you go my friend, a service provided by the City of Calgary which will subsidize your adoption process so it only costs you a mere 200$, not to mention the city also contributes to the Humane Society which will help you adopt a dog cheaper as well. Here's hoping you get the next Air Bud and you can bring some welcome investment in the local movie scene.
So now your ridiculous straw man argument has been shot down does this mean you're on board with subsidizing the cost of in-vitro?
As for my personal opinion, the province pays for contraceptives, vasectomys, abortions, all these things to prevent unwanted babies. Maybe it's my irrational belief in karma that makes me feel we should be helping out that small percentage of the population who for some medical reason aren't able to naturally concieve. I do think there does need to be a age limit and maybe the level of subsization should be connected with income.
I'm at the age now where I have a fair number of friends who are popping out their first kids, seems like a pretty dickish move to say to some people they can't experience that. I see places all over the government where so much money is IMO wasted, seems to me you'd have to be a pretty cold hearted scrooge to not agree to atleast partially subsidize the costs.
Well there you go my friend, a service provided by the City of Calgary which will subsidize your adoption process so it only costs you a mere 200$, not to mention the city also contributes to the Humane Society which will help you adopt a dog cheaper as well. Here's hoping you get the next Air Bud and you can bring some welcome investment in the local movie scene.
So now your ridiculous straw man argument has been shot down does this mean you're on board with subsidizing the cost of in-vitro?
As for my personal opinion, the province pays for contraceptives, vasectomys, abortions, all these things to prevent unwanted babies. Maybe it's my irrational belief in karma that makes me feel we should be helping out that small percentage of the population who for some medical reason aren't able to naturally concieve. I do think there does need to be a age limit and maybe the level of subsization should be connected with income.
I'm at the age now where I have a fair number of friends who are popping out their first kids, seems like a pretty dickish move to say to some people they can't experience that. I see places all over the government where so much money is IMO wasted, seems to me you'd have to be a pretty cold hearted scrooge to not agree to atleast partially subsidize the costs.
Hey, I don't want some mutt from the humane society. God know what kind of problems those dogs have... why adopting a mutt from the humane society would be like adopting a child here in Canada.... God knows what kind of mother and father they had and what kind of medical problems the kid has.... thats why people go the route of IVF isn't it?... so they know for sure what kind of genetic and family history the child has (their own). I want to be sure of the gene pool my kid comes from so give me some of your money so I can procreate and pass down my excellent genes to future generations.
And while we're at it, can you give me a little extra so my wife can get bigger boobs? It would really improve the quality of her life and I guarantee it would improve mine....
My 13 month old son was conceived through IVF. We tried for years to have a baby naturally but just weren't able to. I didn't want to adopt. For whatever reason I felt like I wanted to go the IVF route and so did my wife. We may have looked at adoption if IVF failed but we were hoping to have our own little baby. Calgary is lucky in that the fertility clinic here has the highest success rates in the country (50% give or take). Unfortunately that also means long waiting lists as people come from all over to be treated here. By the end we were lucky. My wife was pregnant on the first try!
We spent close to $20,000 over the course of the year but the money doesn't matter. I can't think of one couple who has had children through IVF that complain about the cost. It is a lot of money but at the same time it isn't because most of us would have spent whatever it took, especially now that we see the gift that we received. If you really understand what it feels like to desperately want a child of your own and to be helpless to make that happen - then the money means nothing in the end.
Having said that, I know some childless couples who didn't have the same opportunity because of the costs involved. These are people who I know would have been great parents and that is sad. For ourselves, we took one more run at it a few months ago and failed. I guess that is the 50% success rate rearing its ugly head. I hate to keep bringing the cost into it but if it seems expensive to get IVF and be blessed enough to produce a child than imagine how expensive it seems when you spend the money and come away with nothing. We aren't sure if we will try again but if I had to guess I'd say we will.
Do I think AHC should fund IVF (and other fertility treatments)? I don't know. What I do know is it would change a lot of lives for the better and would enable a lot of children to be born to parents who would do anything to ensure the kid had a great life.
The Following 2 Users Say Thank You to SportsJunky For This Useful Post:
I'd also like to mention that waiting and watching to see if the Quebecois have it right is ridiculous; it would take almost a full generation to see their fruits ripen. We need to have more decisive on healthcare now, not 20 years from now.
I don't agree that it would take a full generation. The anticipated health care savings are primarily due to reduced multiple/premature births frequently associated with private IVF (as opposed to the public option that will I believe involve a single implantation). There should be some indication within at most a few years whether this will really save the health care system money.
Well, as cold as it sounds a 50% success rate is going to turn a lot of people off.
Cause half the taxpayer money would essentially be 'wasted.'
I still think there are better methods. Competing private clinics would help lower the costs.
I can understand how the success rate would turn some people off - heck, it sometimes makes the infertile crowd sit back and think too.
Do you mean having only private clinics or a private and public fertility clinics? Because private clinics may not be able to do it cheaper. A couple I know from Washington State actually came up to Canada to do their second IVF round because the private clinic there was charging about $19 000 for a IVF cycle, while the Richmond BC clinic only was about $10 000. The few times I've ever seen "IVF deals" is for clinics in Mexico, India, Thailand and one middle eastern country that I can't recall right now.
I think even if there wasn't full funding for IVF (which would strain our poor Calgary clinic even more than it is now, I bet), I'd love to see even half of it covered - even if it's just the non-medicated portion of the fees.
I would have only private clinics. Hell, give tax benefits to make Calgary the IVF capital in the world, both in research, and in the actual procedures.
How much of the procedure would you want to cover with taxpayer money? Knowing of course that you've been through it, and understand what has better success, and what doesn't.
The Following User Says Thank You to Azure For This Useful Post:
I believe India does a lot of stuff like this and they have some very inexpensive but good clinics.... Think of it as a combination medical procedure and holiday.
Check this out...
Quote:
A complete IVF cycle at our clinic costs only US $ 3500 - and this is all-inclusive of all medical procedures, including lab tests, scans, egg pickup and embryo transfer. The approximate total costs of all the medicines used for superovulation for one complete cycle is about US $ 800 more.
