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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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

434 replies

Misfitless · 08/02/2015 14:21

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?

OP posts:
LePetitMarseillais · 08/02/2015 22:26

Depression costs the NHS millions,every infertile couple will very likely need support at some time x2.

LePetitMarseillais · 08/02/2015 22:27

IVF costs £3k,where is this £8k gold plated IVF?

Kewcumber · 08/02/2015 22:28

I'm as certain as I could be that if I didn't fall pregnant naturally, my next preference would be to try and adopt above and before going through any IVF type treatment.

Why bother getting pregnant at all? It consumes hideous amounts of NHS budget between antenatal, post natal and childhood illnesses and lets not get into the cost of schooling. There are children out there just waiting for you OP - recycling isn't just about paper and cans you know.

On the other hand - just listen to yourself and muse for a moment how ridiculously self important and misguided I (who have never been pregnant) would sound pronouncing to a group of pregnant women that they should not have C sections and must breast feed because I just know in their position I would be doing the right thing

I'd see ingrowing toe nails, mole removal, tonsillitis, physiotherapy for tendinopathy all cut completely before fertility treatment. Infertility is way more painful and thankfully we live in a civilised society where we concern ourselves with the mental as well as physical well-being of our fellow humans; within a pretty tight guidelines, but at least it gives some hope to some very desperate people.

And no, you -know* very little about it, what you have are opinions and it's not quite the same thing. It's really just so much hot air... if I had a fiver for every person who has assured they would adopt if... (fill in suitable thing that might happen in the future) then I'd be off on a cruise this summer not camping. Funny that it never occurs to any of them that they might not actually get approved.

Of course you are entitled to your opinion but I don't have to give it equal weight to someones' who does know

FrankelandFilly · 08/02/2015 22:30

You do get that £65million is a fraction of the overall NHS budget don't you?

LePetitMarseillais · 08/02/2015 22:32

And if you're going to cut my use of the NHS when I need it and have paid for it then frankly you have no right to expect it for everything you need,bring on the cuts.

Parts of my body didn't work,sorry I wanted the medicine that is available to correct that.

By your logic babies should be left to die when problems occur in the womb and there should be no miscarriage treatments.

expatinscotland · 08/02/2015 22:33

'Ectopic pregnancies,flushing out tubes,ovarian drilling to relieve PCOS,laparoscopies........'

Yep. Adhesion surgeries for endo, ablation for fibroid or flooding that doesn't respond to Mirena coil (or it cannot be used for one reason or another), hysterectomy as treatment for certain diseases such as fibroid and sometimes endo, all sorts of things besides IVF.

iniquity · 08/02/2015 22:34

65 million is easily wasted every year through missed appointments by humans 'already here'

EllieQ · 08/02/2015 22:35

You keep saying that we should treat the people who are already here. Would you deny NHS treatment (for anything) to immigrants, then? If so, would it be reassessed once they'd been here for a few years? I'm just curious how your logic works...

trufflesnout · 08/02/2015 22:36

By your logic babies should be left to die when problems occur in the womb and there should be no miscarriage treatments.

Not that I agree with OP, but there is a difference between yet-to-be-conceived embryos and foetuses inutero.

Kewcumber · 08/02/2015 22:37

If you think £65million is "a drain" on the NHS then you really aren't well informed enough about the NHS budget.

The budget for 2014 is £95billion

Its estimated that a sensible integrated procurement policy could save the NHS £500million.

IVF is a drop in a very large, very leaky bucket.

Why no campaign against removing moles? Is that not goady glamorous enough for you?

You should be on your knees thanking whichever gods you believe in that you haven't suffered from infertility and the nightmare that it is rather than being so dismissive of it and having your nice neat little plan about what you would do.

trufflesnout · 08/02/2015 22:38

Why no campaign against removing moles

Because moles can become cancerous, I imagine.

LePetitMarseillais · 08/02/2015 22:39

Except some posters seem to think nature should take it's coarse or we stock up problems for future generations.

Kewcumber · 08/02/2015 22:39

And who on earth thinks abortion should be funded by the NHS. You could take all the unwanted babies and give them to the childless and save both the costs of IVF and- the costs of abortion.

Genius. Perhaps you could suggest that to the health minister OP.

Kewcumber · 08/02/2015 22:41

well they knew catagorically mine wasn;t cancerous truffle, it had already been biopsied. And they offered to remove it anyway because it was rubbing on my bra strap and irritating me. Took an hour of a doctor and a nurse's time at a local hospital.

I was amazed they offered.

trufflesnout · 08/02/2015 22:42

It was irritating you and they removed it and you're upset they removed it? I don't follow.

Kewcumber · 08/02/2015 22:48

I said that my infertility was way more painful (to a multiple of thousands) than my mole was so I don't understand why OP is singling out IVF (which I didn't actually qualify for as its quite hard to get on the NHS) when there are so many more areas which could be cut and not cause the same degree of anguish as removing any hope of IVF would cause.

The examples I've used are all things I've had treated on the NHS and would give up before I cut someone else's IVF.

Its a pain you can't imagine if you haven't been through it and I object to people being so cavalier about it as if their neat little what if scenarios aren't actually the stuff of nightmares when it happens in real life rather than an MN thread.

Ironically my final IVF failed on the day before I sat with my mother in a consultants office being told she had terminal cancer. That was a jolly week.

Misfitless · 08/02/2015 22:52

Yes, it is wrong to me because you are showing such a lack of compassion (on a parenting site too!) for the pain infertility causes.

I have no doubt that infertility is awful and distressing and painful. I don't fully understand as I have no first hand experience of it, but do have friends who have been through it. I have already said that. Just because I don't think it should be funded doesn't show a lack of compassion.

You have refused to consider the unfairness of only allowing rich people to have IVF

It is unfair! Fertility is unfair. Life is unfair. This goes without saying. it's so obvious I really didn't know it was a problem that I haven't acknowledged it. I read that and thought, yes, I agree!

Money removes barriers in many cases, not just to the best fertility doctors in the world, but the best schools, barristers, jobs, life expectancy etc, etc. It goes without saying that it's unfair that rich people can afford to have as many cycles as they can wish for, when others can't. This isn't an IVF exclusive argument, and tbh, I didn't realise I had to say that to make my argument valid and less wrong in your eyes. "It's not fair!" is not a be all and end all argument to justify spending millions of pounds on fertility treatment or anything else for that matter. The "It's not fair!" argument rings on deaf ears for the cancer patients who've had their chance of life-enhancing medication cut.

*You don't seem to see that IVF is already rationed."
Again, I didn't know that I had to formally acknowledge this. I hereby formally acknowledge it.

and you contradict yourself in saying having children isn't a right but once you've got pregnant you have the right to free treatment.

FFS it isn't a right! EllieQ do you actually think that it is a right, really?

There is no contradiction in saying that having a child is not a right, but then becoming pregnant, and then having the right to ante natal and post natal care and midwifery care and everything else that comes along.

Once you are pregnant, the life has been created, EllieQ and at that point, the very essence of the NHS means that you and your unborn child has the right to any care needed.

Once a child is conceived following infertility treatment, of course that child has the right to NHS services both before and after it's birth. My problem is with the assisted conception part, honestly, are you not bored of going round and round in circles.

You're saying people have the right to treatment for self-inflicted illnesses eg: liver disease from alcoholism, but not treatment for infertility, which is unlikely to have been self-inflicted.
Yes and God forbid that any child who has been born as a result of fertility treatment develops an alcohol or drug dependency in later life, then that child, too will be entitled to treatment.

And you haven't even bothered to do some research to find facts and figures to support your comments!
It's not a fucking research paper/essay up for assessment, EllieQ it's an ill-though out rambling thread of thoughts and opinions that has evolved as discussions tend to do.

Anyway, some people have made some brilliant points on here. I can't remember the pp's name who mentioned about 3 parent IVF or whatever it's called, but that's something that has stopped me in my tracks.

Your way of insisting that I respond to every little point you make is tiresome and a bit controlling EllieQ. We are allowed to have different opinions. You can't dictate to me how I put across my point. Some of the things that you demand I recite back to you are so obvious that they would just not need to mentioned to most of the people on here, I think. But if I'm wrong about that, then I'm sorry.

OP posts:
trufflesnout · 08/02/2015 22:54

But it's not either or. You can have your mole removed and have IVF. Whether OP thinks it's fair or not is neither here nor there in real terms because the NHS offers infertility treatments and probably always will.

I imagine your mole was removed because it was in an awkward location and could have cracked and bled and gotten infected. It's no good cancelling all those mole ops to pool money for IVF because it's a non-issue surely?

I appreciate that it must be very painful to see such a personal topic bandied around on a thread like this - I personally am finding it very hard to read some of the opinions with regards to disability and long-term illness being "minor" because they are 1. not life threatening and 2. not about having babies.

Kewcumber · 08/02/2015 22:59

Whether OP thinks it's fair or not is neither here nor there in real terms because the NHS offers infertility treatments and probably always will.

truffle I think you have totally misunderstood my posts. I am pointing out that OP's position singling out IVF is totally illogical (there are lots of things which are not life-threatening and sometimes don't work but are deemed worthy of being treated on NHS. I singled out the things I have had treated. I'm glad they were treated, they were annoying and some of them painful. My point was that they any more important or worthy than IVF and banging on about a resource which actually is a very minor part of the NHS budget.

Kewcumber · 08/02/2015 23:00

We are allowed to have different opinions.

but to badly paraphrase George Orwell OP, not all opinions are created equal...

trufflesnout · 08/02/2015 23:03

I see. And I think (correct me Misfit if I'm wrong) that a lot of the points raised on this thread to counter that are to do with - let's take your mole op - the measurable result that treatment provides. One of OP's earlier points was that part of her objection to NHS-funded IVF was that it has a statistically low success rate, whereas the removal of an irritating mole has a 100% success rate and is comparatively cheap and quick .

Kewcumber · 08/02/2015 23:05

and all those mole op's wouldn't be canceled to pool money for IVF, according to OP's view of the NHS they'd be pooled to fund more cancer treatment.

I think we should just charge anyone £1 if they see a GP for anything which turns out not to be life threatening and that money can go to cancer care. With 340 million consultations a year that £340 million for cancer. Much better solution than the piffling £65m for IVF.

Kewcumber · 08/02/2015 23:07

I've had that mole removed 3 times! It certainly isn't a 100% success rate. in me it has a worse success rate already than IVF and may get worse if it grows back again.

trufflesnout · 08/02/2015 23:07

I think we should just charge anyone £1 if they see a GP for anything which turns out not to be life threatening

I disagree hugely.

What about charging £1 for missed GP appointments? The NHS says that costs them about £162 million per year.

Kewcumber · 08/02/2015 23:09

I've also had three different treatments for tendinopathy none of which have worked. It isn't life threatening just painful. Each different treatment for tendinopathy has around a 30% success rate (with no guarantee that any one of them will work) - they still try.

The fact it might not work is hardly exclusive to IVF.

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