NHS IVF policy change

[Bambamrubblesmum]

Have you seen this?

www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/rip-ivf-nhs-cuts-to-fertility-treatment-will-deny-thousands-parenthood-a6717326.html

I can see both sides of the argument but AIBU to feel very sad that it's come to this

Purple I am saying that we have become people who expect to have everything and have tantrums if we can't. As others have said children are not a right

I think it's absolutely disgusting to talk about the desire to have a child as being in any way similar to wanting a new car or a bigger house or whatever. You have no idea at all, despite your claims to have struggled to conceive.

I note on another thread your BMI was 45 in December. Ever have any help from the NHS with that or the consequences of being morbidly obese?

Sitting here feeding our beautiful NHS IVF DD, sad that others won't have the same chance we did. We had up to three cycles but she was first tine lucky. I still can't believe it.
She's changed our lives, but we just couldn't have afforded to fund the treatment privately.
I hope they continue this for other families. I can't put into words what a difference it made to us.

I have never suffered infertility but have suffered multiple miscarriage and late losses and have been blessed with living children too. I am strongly in favour of IVF being avaliable. The suffering after a loss is bad enough, the desperation etc. I can only imagine how much sadness it causes.

Heath is about wellbeing and not just the absence of disease. Of course peope should be helped. Some people on this thread really are heartless. I'm alright Jack springs to mind.

Tiger ... Had I been unable to have my children, I would have adopted however

Actually you probably wouldn't. The vast majority of people who say this know cock all about adoption. As the head of Barnardos said, most people would be surprised to find out that they would be unsuitable parents for adoption and turned down.

In fact one of the reasons often giving for turning people down is that the fact they are childless means they have no childcare experience. Renting privately is another one which cuts out swathes of the childbearing age group. Or working a contract job or being self employed, on a zero hour contract. Having suffered from mild depression once in the 90s.

And most of the children available to adopt are older with specialist issues that most people cannot cope with. It's not a matter of going to pick out a baby these days.

I'm sure a lot of people undergoing IVF would much rather forgo invasive and expensive treatments, but the reality is that adoption is an expensive, time consuming and difficult process and you're even less likely to have a child at the end than you would be with IVF.

I have PCOS and yes I am lucky to have had three healthy children without assistance, but there has to be natural selection in any species

My unnatural DD is having her porridge sat next to me now. It's not often that Mumsnet makes me feel violent but this is one of those times. Dick.

Good friends of mine have been trying with IVF and IUI for a few years, it's heartbreaking to see the pain and desperately awful disappointment each time it fails. They will be wonderful mothers, they are affected by the lack of funding and have put their all into the last round. I so desperately hope it works this time for them.

My unnatural DD is having her porridge sat next to me now. It's not often that Mumsnet makes me feel violent but this is one of those times. Dick.

Congratulations on your wee girl, some people say awful things, please don't let them get to you.

Limited NHS resources. Difficult issues. My sibling paid (as single) for IVF and has lovely children which is another option for women who work full time perhaps?

I think if IVF was more successful then we wouldn't be having this discussion. It's the high failure rate meaning one live birth could have cost the NHS £15K (some more, some less) that is so problematic.

It's also silly to say that money will go back to the treasury and not into the NHS. It's part of the NHS budget so of course it remains in the NHS budget and it may go to treat a child with leukaemia.

I know if I hadn't had my children naturally I would have worked my socks off to fund IVF. I can barely imagine the pain of childlessness and adoption is not an easy option by any means.

If couples paid towards the NHS IVF treatment the cost could probably be halved and would go some way to making it more affordable. Maybe the NHS should look at charging for less essential services?

Either way we need to start paying more tax to fund the NHS

It's very difficult but I suppose if you don't have children you would both be working so should be able to pay towards fertility treatment? If you can't afford treatment can you afford to have children? Maybe if everyone contributed who needed ivf the price could be less than private ivf and could be done via the NHS.

On AIBU we consistently see posts arguing in favour of CTC saying that if tax credits weren't available then only the wealthy would be able to have children

I presume that posters who think IVF is a luxury and should be cut are also in favour of cutting maternity cover and tax credits, because obvs if you can't afford to pay for antenatal or to raise them, then you shouldn't be having them

I'm sorry this thread has disintegrated into so much mudslinging about IVF and 'luxury' treatments.

I can assure you that the vast majority of those involved in commissioning in the NHS do not see fertility services as a 'luxury' but in extraordinarily constrained financial times have to find places where they can make cuts with the least possible impact on patients. There will be the odd arsehole who fails to understand the impact of infertility but I've never heard a commissioner suggesting fertility as a cut out of anything other than financial despair.

In a CCG budget it's a question of finding all the possible 'efficiencies' you can before cutting any patient care. Only after all these years of constraint, the easy efficiencies have pretty much been ticked off. Local health systems need to transform the way they working we have any chance of dealing with our demographic issues. And be given more money from increased taxes.

And, of course, having more people to be tax payers in the future is going to help those of us in middle age now!

Natural fucking selection????? Jesus Christ.

There's trying to strip emotion out of a financial debate and there's being a cruel cunt.

The NHS saved my life. And do you know how they did this? By funding my IVF treatment. So those saying Infertility isn't a disease and that IVF is a luxury can fuck off.

If we're going to have 'natural selection' then surely we should just do away with the NHS? The rich have proven they can survive the race of the fittest by providing the most resources for them and their offspring so deserve the treatment they can buy. Poor and have a child with cancer? Sorry, that's just natural selection. Post partum blood infection? Sorry, if your body can't fight it off alone you're not getting any help. And do away with the benefits system while we're at it so your orphans can die of neglect.

That's true natural selection. On the up side, at least it would probably breed out those dumb enough to think getting rid of NHS IVF is in any way natural selection.

There is an obvious solution to the crisis in the health service. We all pay more tax. Why don't one of you start a petition asking that we all pay more tax to fund health care? I'll sign it.

fakename

I wouldn't necessarily have a problem with that.

Or, we could simply recoup the cost of missed GP and hospital appointments from patients. That would save £1bn a year. Twice what IVF costs the NHS annually.

No one has been able to answer my question yet.

If having children isn't a "right", why do NHS maternity services exist at all? Why isn't everyone forced to go privately to have their children?

I think a concsistent approach across the country would help couples because it can feel very unfair to people.

It may seem like that but in reality it is fairer for their to be differences in what is available eg BCG vaccinations are not available on the NHS everywhere.

I'm uneasy about IVF and other treatments being available on the NHS, some people have a realistic prospect of becoming parents with IVF, others don't stand much of a chance even with several rounds of IVF.

Choices do have to be made and judgments are part of that. 70 year old women in the UK do not get funding for IVF on the NHS, that is due to judgement nothing else.

On a complete emotionless point of view there are too many people in the world, is it ethical to bring any more in to it?

Why do we accept paying for glasses/contact lenses and dental treatment but not IVF?

The current government has no intention of saving the NHS, these cuts will keep on coming and the budgets will keep on getting smaller. And while the cuts happening everyone will argue with each other about who needs it more and the focus won't be on the the people who want it gone.

I would be happier to pay more money to keep the NHS but I don't even think more money being plowed into it will save it from all the cuts.

I wouldn't have a problem at all with paying more tax if the problem of health tourism was sorted out.

Health tourism costs the NHS minuscule amounts of money. It's a drop in the ocean. They already employ teams to claw back as much money as possible. They report people with unpaid bills and it is noted if they try to enter the country again. Apart from refusing to treat them when the present in A&E, what more would you expect them to do?

My sibling did find at the time that some areas of the country would give a single woman IVF but not her area so she saved up and paid and I am sure she would regard it as the best money ever spent actually and worth all that work. Do people think the NHS should have funded it? (She had no fertility problems, just wanted a child without a man) It has never been an easy issue. Should those of us who could afford private healthcare for our births use that to save the NHS resources?

The current government has no intention of saving the NHS, these cuts will keep on coming and the budgets will keep on getting smaller. And while the cuts happening everyone will argue with each other about who needs it more and the focus won't be on the the people who want it gone.

^^ This

You've all watched this tory government do this 'style' of thing, first off we had the financial crisis caused by, suprise suprise, bankers but everyone was happy to let labour take the hit for that, then came the benefit cuts, remember is used to be called Social Security? Security for your family, being able to feed them and keep them warm.

Instead the government and its propaganda machine the BBC, MSM, and other right leaning papers started calling it welfare, no security but welfare. Normally people would be incensed about how the disabled and poor are treated but they did their job well and came out with the 'deserving' and 'undeserving' poor narrative and every one swallowed it. You have people killing themselves over their benefits. Were has all the money they saved on this gone? It wasn't the NHS

Independant living gone for disabled people and old people at risk of their social care failing, 'oh well they should have had a pension' right? Most of these old people have paid tax ALL THEIR LIFE to be treated like this but we have to make cuts cuts cuts. Now the cuts to the NHS and all ready the narrative has started on here of 'deserving' NHS treatments and 'undeserving' NHS treatments. Cant you see while all this infighting occurs you'll be left with nothing.

BUT THERES NO MONEY LEFT

Plenty of money for cutting corporation tax, inheritance tax and making sure we get to sit at the big table cos of our trident, but you all believe that theres no money left. Neo liberalism and privatisation are at fault here but most of you that vote blue or purple choose not to see it because what sort of person would that make you, how gullible are you to fall the narrative being pushed by the propaganda.

First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me - Martin Niemoller

Wasnt meant to be such a long badly worded post sorry, but please I ask all of you if you can don't vote purple or blue at any election not for awhile any way just so people can feel like they can breathe again. Ill shut up now

Natural selection????

How lovely, how sensitive, how empathetic . OK, if you want to play it like that, I reckon any child DH and I might have managed to have is likely to have been more of an intelligent, responsible and productive member of society than huge numbers of the UK population.

Wanker.

natural selection

Hahahahaha. I take it you are either invincible or have decided you will never accept treatment for any conditions you may develop.....
What a statement

Actually health tourism is a very similar cost per year as IVF. So if one has to be scrapped why is the other allowed to continue.