to think NHS IVF rules are unfair?

[kathkim]

So I have adenomyosis and endometriosis. It's looking increasingly likely I will need IVF. Why can't I get it on the NHS just because my partner has a child with someone else? It's me who needs the help. How much would it cost privately?

It was I who said I paid £10000 for all my treatment of one cycle. You see what a lot of people don't realise is all the extras you have to pay for to do it. The drugs are horrifically expensive - that is a lot of the cost; then there's the scans; the blood tests; the HIV & other tests, and if there is anything that needs sorting to improve your chances (like me), the list goes on. The procedure I had done before my IVF wouldn't have been done on the NHS as they would feel it wasn't making me ill, so I had to pay £2000 approx for it to be done privately - all without being put under as I wouldn't have been able to afford the extra cost. Weird thing - it was done at a NHS hospital and you have to pay for the privilege of using the facilities. Yes the fertility clinics would make a profit and yes, unfortunately today's NHS policies make the choice to have children, one only for the rich or someone like me, who had saved for many years to have £10000 to spend. It makes me angry all those people that have little sympathy for people with infertility. By those same measures, I would say my hard earned taxes shouldn't go on people using A&E as a doctors surgery or drug addicts. I try not to be so judgemental and say everyone who needs care is given it. I hope you are successful in your journey op.

Honestly, i appreciate for some women a baby is the one thing in the world they want most, but i think until the NHS is in a better position that people aren't dying waiting in A+E of survivable illness/injury, all NHS funded IVF should be put on hold.
Treating someone with life threatening illness/injury should take priority, especially when IVF can be done privately and not at THAT high a cost, compared to the costs of saving a life. Same goes for all cosmetic procedures like boob jobs, tummy tucks etc.

Darla21 if you are blessed with children, I hope they never find themselves in this situation. Might make you have empathy for others..

infertility is not an illness

1. Infertility IS an illness.
2. Not treating it can lead to depression which is also an illness - maybe we shouldn't treat that either?

Its unfair and unkind. The NHS does lots of stuff that improves quality of life not just save life.
For example cataracts, deafness in ears, grommets, hip replacements, hernias, gall bladder removal. It's pain physical similar to emotional.

I'm losing my hair. Could make depressed, and ill. Should I be treated for depression for hair loss.

The NHS is funded by everyone. To survive it needs to be both inclusive and equitable. That means treating a range of problems so that ALL of the people who pay in see SOME benefit. Proportionality of money paid in to money taken out has to be part of that consideration.The NHS strict criteria for treatment mean that many couples who receive treatment are much more likely to be net contributors than couples who have multiple children as they will go on to have either no kids or just one. You can argue that big families are an investment in the future as the kids will earn/pay however that's not the way most people and policies account for spending - spending relating to a child is attributable to the parent of that child.

There is a lot of misinformation about IVF. It's only part of a range of fertility treatments so 'getting rid' of it would release less funds than some people think unless they were proposing that all fertility investigations were not pursued. This would raise a variety of problems all of its own as other health conditions are then not identified.

The costs of ivf to the NHS are much lower than the prices quoted privately. Indeed, if NHS access to ivf were removed thenit would cost significantly more for the 'worthy' groups who some posters talk about restricting the service to, such as cancer patients to access services as there are economies of scale. In this scenario patients would go abroad to clinics that are not subject to the same regulations as in the U.K. Consequently the NHS will pick up the bill in terms of complex pregnancies involving multiple births etc. Or sickness in women who have been over stimulated.

There is a lot of misinformation about other medical treatments. Medicine is not an exact science and many treatments other than ivf fail. The reason many cancer and other treatments are not offered is because the efficacy is unproven not because there is no money. Even with standard procedures outcomes can be variable. And what about miscarriage investigations? If the logic is that only the sickest people are treated on the basis that they are most needy and here already, surely that rules out miscarriage investigations?

Kathkim have you looked into paid ivf through your nearest NHS clinic? We did a round of paid ivf through the NHS clinic. It cost £4500. If we had done it at the nearest private clinic it would have been about the same, but this meant funds going into the NHS clinic as it doesn't actually cost them as much as they charge. I saw Robert Winston on tv once saying it was more like £1500.

I don't think the NHS should fund IVF at all. We don't need more children, we have loads needing adoption, sorry to be so brutal

Thanks Marma I will definitely look into this. I have accepted I will be paying for it one way or the other - at least so long as I want to become a mother with my current partner!

There are some lifestyle related heart conditions where you can get on prescription tablets that cost £100 per tablet. That's a cost of 3,000 per month. That's basically an IVF cycle each month.

To be honest the NHS needs to negotiate harder with drug companies to save money. It needs to be brave and use more generic medications from India. It needs to make NHS service mandatory for UK educated doctors (too many go straight into private practice or leave the country) & stop giving preference to non-UK educated doctors with 'experience' unless the education system and their language skills are comparable. It needs to cut costs where it can, sure, but it's not by completely getting rid of free IVF cycles.

TippyT that sort of comment is completely unhelpful, inaccurate and Ill-informed, sorry to be so brutal. Have you not read the thread? If you already think there are too many children then let's introduce a cap on the numbers everyone can have. That would save a lot more money on schools, maternity care etc. than stopping IVF.

There are also not hundreds of children waiting for adoption. I know someone who waited 2.5 years for a child, each time a child came up for adoption that matched their family, they were up against more than 100 other parents^^ also desperate to adopt.

Infertility in itself is not an illness, but it is often caused by illness.

My infertility is caused by an illness called Polycystic Ovary Syndrome. Other women have illnesses such as endometriosis which prevent them from getting pregnant. Are we not entitled to treatment for those illnesses on the NHS?

There was a very good article written by Dr Robert Winston a few years ago about the fact that the NHS is too quick to turn to IVF instead of treating the underlying cause of the fertility problems.

It's a Daily Mail link, but it speaks a lot of sense: www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-3220258/NHS-greed-couples-conned-IVF-PROFESSOR-ROBERT-WINSTON-fertility-treatment-pioneer-delivers-devastating-attack-send-shockwaves-health-service.html

From the article:

"But now the chances are that if you complain of infertility, you will be referred straight to an IVF clinic - where there may be no proper attempt at making a diagnosis.

To fail to find the cause of any symptom is bad, irresponsible medicine. Each cause of infertility - and there are many - may need a different course of action. IVF most frequently fails when the underlying cause is not first established.

The NHS is much to blame. So often, it does not take infertility seriously. The guidelines for treatment are laughable. As soon as possible, patients are shunted into the private sector.
Then there is the cost: unquestionably, IVF should not cost nearly as much as what is commonly charged - anywhere up to £5,000. Even NHS hospitals frequently make a profit that goes to support other services."

Hang on a sec, the thing that costs the NHS money is people. So surely the most effective way to spend money is just to reduce the number of people? So as shotta says, why not introduce limits for the number of children people have altogether? Compulsory contraceptive injections and abortion. Introduce an adoption style assessment and only let people have children when they pass that and get to the top of a waiting list. So obviously anybody who'd ever suffered from minor depression or financial problems would be ruled out from the get go but hey ho. Oh and you'd have to pay a few thousand pounds up front with no guarantee you'd be approved.

And charge women to give birth. After all pregnancy isn't an illness, it's a lifestyle choice. And if getting pregnant in the first place is an uneccessary waste why are we paying for months of ante and postnatal care when contraception and abortion is cheaper and quicker and doesn't produce a little drain on resources.

That would save the NHS loads of money and there would be far less children being born to drain resources. Everybody wins.

Of course I'm not really suggesting that, but I wonder how much fertile people would like that? Having the sort of restrictions they want to impose on infertile people put on them. I imagine if that happened suddenly they would start being able to empathise with those who couldn't have children a bit more.

'We have loads needing adoption' Tippy t - I don't know where to start with that one but I'll give it a go as its an old chestnut and again born out of misinformation.

Adoption is about finding parents for children not about finding children for would be parents. The majority of children requiring adoption have special physical and emotional needs that make individuals with experience of parenting more suitable than those who do not. Consequently, this is reflected in the adoption process. This does not exclude infertile couples but it may make it more difficult to make a match that is appropriate for a child.

The second aspect you may not be aware of is that to begin the (rightly) long and thorough process of being considering as an adoptive parent you are required to give up fertility treatment. Makes sense as it would be a waste to have people drop out if they become pregnant and adoption should not be undertaken as a second best or insurance policy. That means that you are (no pun intended) putting all your eggs in one basket by giving up a process that your access to is limited in terms of age and they you have a degree of control over, for one that has a whole other set of rules and regulations that you have no control over.

Finally, adoption is open to everyone - it's not just the infertile who could make it their first stop when wanting to create a baby.

I don't get the whole "driving is also a lifestyle choice so if you're in a car crash should you not be treated?!"

Of course if you're pregnant or have had a child you/they should receive treatment on the NHS, similarly if you were in a crash. But you wouldn't ask the NHS to buy you a car so why should they fund you having a child?

I don't mean to be disrespectful I can only imagine the pain infertility causes and I genuinely want to understand this as I've seen people challenge the whole 'lifestyle choice' thing but don't get the argument?

Don't the different trusts decide what to spend their finding on?

Isn't it more important to spend that money on life threatening illness, something which people really need?

IVF isn't even a guarantee, it's expensive and as someone who paid privately for it, depending on your reasons for infertility not usually the answer.

sorry to be so brutal
Here, let me fix that for you

sorry to be so stupid

beingsunny can I direct you to my earlier post? Ivf is no guarantee but nor are a whole raft of other medicines and procedures. If 'guarantee' was the criteria for treatment hospitals would shut down. As for ivf being 'expensive', well cost to NHS is less than the private fees mentioned plus as a PP mentioned, it is sometimes used inappropriately exactly because it is relatively cheap.

Hi Lozster,
My probably unclear point about it not being a guarantee was really talking about the fact that often the issues causing the infertility aren't addressed and then causes failure which is heartbreaking and a waste of money.

I had secondary infertility and failed private ivf which was expensive.

After this I looked at other options and looked to the root cause.

What if free maternity services were ONLY available post-IVF for infertile couplws. That would save a lot of money

By the way - anyone who says I don't understand infertility... I do. I am infertile. Me and DP tried to conceive naturally for 2 years and suffered a miscarriage. I know infertility is bloody awful and I hated it.

We adopted because I just couldn't face the fact that for most people IVF doesn't work after one attempt, and even some people who have had it still struggle to actually get pregnant. I couldn't face the depression of a cycle not working.

I'd love the NHS to fund IVF for all, but it's on its knees at the moment. We have a govt. who is hellbent on destroying it and a crisis that means we can't afford to look after older people. At this moment in time IVF is a luxury we can't afford.

Yes, infertility is awful and it's an illness. But sadly, in the list of illnesses the NHS needs to treat right now, it's quite low down in the list. There's plenty of illnesses that don't get NHS treatment - people who are gluten free don't get a discount on gluten fee foods, despite them being massively expensive. There's other stuff too.

In years to come, IVF will get cheaper and maybe a better system will come along. Until that time, IVF on the NHS will be and should be at the mercy of each individual trust.

The solution to a government hellbent on destroying the NHS is an effective, nationwide opposition to the destruction of the NHS, not a heirarchy of worthiness, with the medical conditions that only women suffer from coming bottom of the pile.

Once treatment for diseases of the reproductive system is no longer available, what will come next on the last of luxuries the NHS can't afford?

Hi bit late to the party so missed most of the comments! Yes agree with marma, you can do it cheaper through an NHS clinic, or egg sharing if you meet the criteria, age etc, also cheap abroad, where I live in Putney SW London the cost of living is so high people put off having babies until they are financially stable, this means the NHS wait is 4 years 😬, the consultant said it would have been to late for me by then due to bloods etc, went private

As for leaving someone as it means not having a child, it can work both ways, was in a relationship and my DP said if he found out the girl he was dating couldn't have children he would dump them (luckily enough I ended up with someone else 😬) also know of a married couple, the husband said they would have to have 'a talk' if she couldn't get pregnant, this was after 18 months of trying, luckily they have two now 😬
Good luck op! Get saving 🍀🍀