To wonder how, with all the funding cuts in the NHS, fertility treatment is still funded?

[Misfitless]

I know I will be flamed.

I considered name-changing, but it's cowardly, so I will take the flack.

Maybe infertility treatment has been cut, and I just haven't heard about it, but I have certainly heard that some cancer treatments have been cut.

I know it's easy for me to say, I have not had fertility issues, but I genuinely think that if I did, I wouldn't go down the route of expecting the NHS to fund it.

I am the only person on MN who feels this way/the only one who will admit it?

Cannot believe some of the utterly horrible remarks made on here about children - that any are destined to become 'scroungers' or 'feckless'.

Exactly as I said before!risks are extremely low and could well be caused by the infertility and not the IVF so no need for the scaremongering.

I paid for ivf privately too, it's bullshit that it's easily available for free on the nhs.

Certainly no need for horrible comments about the moral superiority of people who might need to use IVF to conceive and their children, either.

Well young we disagree.

I don't think a clinically and obviously obese patient has any more right to treatment caused by his/her obesity than a healthy living patient who will cost the NHS very little has to IVF.

IVF must save millions in depression,endo and PCOS treatment alone.

Horse i agree, it's basically rationed already. It does not seem consistent though. I was offered 3 cycles of PGID despite being 40 already. Maybe they prefer to do the genetic stuff as it's quite new? I do think the same rules should apply to all.

It's rationed already. Criteria has to be met and the number of cycles is restricted.

I had to pay £250 for every piffling little blood test,it's a joke.Angst should be directed towards the private clinics,it really doesn't need to cost that much.

Thank-you young girl. And I'm glad life worked out for you. (Would post flowers for you too, but don't know how to do it with an iPad).

I live overseas with no Public Health Service. You get private health insurance, which doesn't always cover maternity, chence having my baby cost me a small fortune.. The NICU alone was 1k gbp a day.

IVF is rarely covered on health insurance, so again you have to pay for this yourself.

We knew this, so saved and self funded. It also means we will only have one child as we can't afford another one.

So this whole thread is very interesting to me.

But you are missing the point... The cases where a specific illness is clearly and demonstrably caused by obesity and/or excessive junk food must be vanishingly rare. Obesity is a side effect of many drugs, for example.

I agree that IVF should be available in principle. However, when the health service is so skint it's letting the elderly go blind and leaving people with severe MH issues to commit suicide rather than get treatment, I suggest there should be higher priorities for funding at the moment.

Sooooooo you're saying you can never directly link conditions to obesity.Wow we're screwed then.

Exactly as I said before!risks are extremely low and could well be caused by the infertility and not the IVF so no need for the scaremongering.

This

What a nasty and scare monger post expat.

Erm no, just saying that it is fraught with difficulty and risk, and possibly a fool's errand.

Expat

I'm sorry. I'm actually still reeling from the last thread about this (all of one week ago, FYI OP, hundreds of posts) where some bint came along saying that "women who don't bother having children until their 30s deserve to be infertile and not get IVF because they spent so long working in order to have a 'career' and save for a house when they should have had children in their 20s" (and presumably make someone else/the taxpayer responsible for housing and feeding these children).

It really upset me. That's where the "feckless" comment came from. I'm sorry I reacted to it on this thread, I shouldn't have.

You may well have paid privately to have your children when they were born, but if you used the NHS you have used public funds and people would argue that they are entitled to one or two cycles of IVF as they have a condition that prevents them having a child and they pay in the same as everyone else. I can see both sides of the argument, but medical science has developed ways of helping people with any issues they may have so it should, in an ideal world, help them the best way they can. Im just scared it will become privatised in years to come then only the rich will be able to afford any help with anything anyway.

misfitless you should get flamed....with statements like 'it's all so entitled' .....because IVF/infertility is funded by the NHS. Who the hell are you to say that? Personally, you appear to have a very black and white view of things..'Oh, if I couldn't afford to have IVF then I would adopt'. How do you even know if you would be deemed suitable to adopt? Many prospective adopters are not approved. Ever.

I agree, I might not be deemed suitable to adopt. I do have a black and white view in some respects. I wonder if anyone knows the success rate of NHS funded IVF treatment.

I'm no expert, but I know many on mn are. I just think it's crushing that some cancer drugs are withdrawn because they are not "cost effective" enough...and yet, reading various threads on here over the years, you hear about people having countless failed IVF collectively. So how is it OK for even one cycle to be funded, when chances are it will fail and be money down the drain?

I know this sounds harsh, but these drugs that extend life by 6 months...seriously how can it be just to say that a life is not important enough to be extended by 6 months, but a couple/woman's right/need to have a baby is so valid and important that it's worth the risk of spending thousands of pounds, even if it doesn't work?

Of course infertility treatment should be available as part of healthcare. If your reproductive bits aren't functioning right, we should treat that if we can. Within reason/age but, yeah, we should try.

The NHS is not just about cancer treatment, and shouldn't only be about saving lives.

I'd be interested to know how many couples who receive IVF on the NHS are cancer survivors. If it's a significant proportion, it makes a very strong argument for pouring even more funding into cancer drugs that don't leave the person infertile.

misfit the success rate for the 30k treatment I was offered was somewhere south of 20%. Suspect it's skewed by the genetic testing though eg embryos with the mutation are destroyed.

Them ain't good odds

'I know this sounds harsh but...'.

Yeah, it sounds harsh, and fortunately more empathetic people than you are involved in the nuanced decision making.

Why cancer, OP? My mother has Parkinson's, there isn't a cure for it, just measures to improve her quality of life. Why should drugs that can 'only' extend life by a few months be more important than something that could improve her quality of life for years? But no-one is saying funding for Parkinson's should increase at the expense of cancer drugs.

I am guessing from your comments that you don't have children yet, I right?

It shouldn't have to be either or. Cancer patients should be allowed more time and Parkinson's patients should be allowed the best quality of care possible.

EdSheeran

Ideally yes, but the vast majority of cancer drugs are given to people who are above normal reproductive age, so there is not much demand. Younger patients are often given the opportunity to freeze eggs/sperm for later use.

Cancer drugs need to be able to destroy cancer cells but it's difficult for a drug to distinguish between mutated cancer cells and normal healthy cells, so it wreaks destruction on them all and that tends to be when fertility is compromised.

Also cancer in the young is sometimes caused by genetic faults, so many patients prefer to have fertility treatment because we are (slowly and expensively) learning how to test embryos for gene mutations.

My clinic's website says that in 2013 40% of NHS patients became pregnant (so not necessarily a take home baby) on their first attempt.