MinnPost’s Daily Newsletter
The latest on the politics and policy shaping Minnesota.
Delivered straight
to your inbox.
Cityscape | Twin Cities urban geographer Bill Lindeke weighs in on city life, transportation, planning and more in his column delivered to your inbox weekly.
With the clock ticking to close out the 2024 legislative session, Minnesota Democrats pushed to pass the year’s remaining bills in a frenzy. After concluding on May 19, Minnesota Democrats failed, once again, to pass a law that would have mandated insurance companies to cover infertility treatments in Minnesota.
The “Minnesota Building Families Act” aimed to require every healthcare plan to “provide comprehensive coverage for the diagnosis of infertility, treatment for infertility, and standard fertility preservation services…”. Despite strong advocacy by Minnesota families who have struggled with infertility, the bill did not pass due to cost concerns while the state faces already high spending. A public opinion poll in April of this year found that 67% of Americans support requiring health insurance companies to include coverage for IVF while a mere 7% opposed.
However, there is one healthcare plan in Minnesota that is leading the charge with providing coverage for many of the most popular assisted reproductive technology procedures (ART), including in-vitro fertilization (IVF), intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) and cryopreservation with storage of an embryo for up to one year. The Minnesota Advantage Health Plan, offered exclusively through Health Partners, covers two ART cycles and a maximum benefit of $30,000 in a patient’s lifetime. However, this amount does not include fertility drugs that often accompany treatment. Through this plan, patients are required to be diagnosed as medically infertile, which does not include oocyte cryopreservation (egg freezing) that young women have begun to seek out to extend their healthiest years of reproduction.
Some men and women already receive infertility treatment coverage by being state employees or working for certain major companies in Minnesota like Target, Amazon, General Mills and Ecolab. Yet many families and individuals are still left to pay for infertility treatments out of pocket. The average cost of one complete round of IVF in Minnesota is between $10,000 and $20,000 with no guarantee of achieving a live birth. Since IVF is still a relatively new technology (only losing its “experimental” title in 2012), many families pursuing ART in hopes of having children come up empty-handed. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data in 2021, 413,776 ART cycles were completed, leading to 91,906 deliveries. That is a success rate of only 22%.
Even though ART is still evolving, usage rates are growing in popularity all over the world with many countries, including South Korea, Israel and France, even subsidizing the costs. In the United States, 22 States have laws that require insurance companies to cover some types of infertility treatments and only 12 that cover both IVF and fertility preservation. The inclusion of infertility treatment coverage in Minnesota would not only help young families and individuals struggling with infertility, but it also has benefits extending far beyond the exam room.
Annika Peterson
There are three benefits to expanding ART access that often go unnoticed. First is the increased number of babies as a result of IVF at a moment when Minnesota is seeing declining birth rates. Even though Minnesota saw a slight increase in births in 2023 due to the pandemic, Minnesota has followed the national trend of seeing an average of 2% decrease in its crude birth rate each year. The United States has not neared concerningly low birth rates like in East Asia, but an increase in ART access would increase birth rates on the margins.
Another benefit could actually reduce the costs of ART in the long run with the use of the best quality technologies and practices available. Cheaper forms of ART often lead to more high-risk pregnancies and multiple births. The more complications experienced through a pregnancy, the more costly it becomes. Then add twins or triplets into the mix and you have a much higher degree of risk for both mother and babies. The best option is to do a single embryo transfer with an egg that was extracted from a woman under the age of 30.
Lastly, extending ART coverage could be another avenue to further eliminate barriers to access based on economic status. Those who have had access to ART in the past have been high to middle-class individuals with enough money to cover multiple ART cycles out-of-pocket. Breaking down barriers to another form of healthcare regardless of economic status would lead to more individuals and families being able to achieve their dreams of having children.
ART has evolved from a radical and worrisome new technology in the 1980s to a staple in reproductive care today. Now that ART is more popular than ever, lawmakers must start seeing ART as the necessary healthcare that all Minnesotans deserve to fight infertility.
Annika Peterson is a Minnesota native who recently completed a master’s degree in Asia/Pacific Studies in Taipei, Taiwan. Her research interests include women’s health and assisted reproductive technology policy in East Asia and the United States.
Want to add your voice?
If you’re interested in joining the discussion, consider writing a Community Voices commentary or counterpoint. (For more information about Community Voices, see our Submission Guidelines.)
Related
Source link : http://www.bing.com/news/apiclick.aspx?ref=FexRss&aid=&tid=66c015643c5d476fa1cc4acd521ed33d&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.minnpost.com%2Fcommunity-voices%2F2024%2F08%2Flets-expand-coverage-of-infertility-treatments-in-minnesota%2F&c=4006148564665302620&mkt=en-us
Author :
Publish date : 2024-08-16 09:26:00
Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source.