...to ask why the NHS funds IVF?

[moofeatures]

I promise I'm neither an (intentionally) goady fucker, nor Katie Hopkins.

But.

Following on from a recent thread about there being a perception that public money grows on trees, I'd like to ask your stance on the NHS funding IVF.

Now, before I get flamed for my insensitivity, let me explain that I myself was diagnosed with ovarian failure in my 20s. I am still of an age where I'd meet the criteria for NHS IVF funding, which would be my only way to have a biological child. I initially grieved for this as I always assumed I'd be pregnant one day, but also from day 1 of my diagnosis I've felt that artificial reproductive hormone therapy/IUI/IVF falls outside the remit of what the NHS should provide as it serves no medically therapeutic purpose.

The logical response to my argument is: "if the only option for IVF is to privately fund, then you're depriving less affluent people the chance to become parents", which is both true and a shame... but is it the NHS's problem? Really, it's the infertility which took away that choice - and it is a choice, not a right... at least in my opinion.

Am I alone in feeling this way?

And then there was the counselling I got on the NHS,the ending of my career(and thus the taxes I was paying) as balancing infertility and a stressful job was nigh on impossible......

There are some very callous people here. Why should we interfere with any natural selection then by treating any illness? There are few things that I can imagine being more heartbreaking than not being able to have a child you desperately want.

Well we've established that those of us who are infertile

• should be eliminated by natural selection
• there's some reason why we weren't meant to have children
• if we are depressed by the bereavement of infertility and miscarriage then we don't deserve to have a child anyway

Best treat the deserving ill like obesity induced illnesses and keep them alive rather than treat any infertiles. We don't want them breeding and passing on their barrenness after all!

I agree with a pp that the NHS should provide fertility treatment at cost or slightly subsided, so a bit like getting an NHS dentist instead of a private one.

That way more people could access, eg those with secondary infertility, where one partner has a child already, those over 40 etc.

I think the NHS could be saved if a lot of 'non essential' services were provided at a subsidised cost but weren't completely free (eg a lot physio, hydrotherapy sessions, cosmetic procedures etc). Imagine if most people (eg any tax payer) had to pay a fiver to see a GP.

There are few things that I can imagine being more heartbreaking than not being able to have a child you desperately want

There's plenty of heartbreaking things in life...I don't know why infertility has some special status amongst life's tragedies.

I had IVF and I was incredibly fortunate to be able to afford it and also for it to work on the first go. Do I think it should be funded on the NHS? Yes - to those people who cannot afford it I think it would be heartless not to give couples who have been desperately trying for a child without success a chance at having a baby. I’m now lucky enough to have two children but I shudder to think how my life would have turned out had things not turned out the way they did. My infertility was a very dark time for me. I often thought about suicide. I felt like I had nothing to live for. My infertility was unexplained but something was very clearly not right because I would bleed on and off throughout the month every month without fail. None of the tests gave a definitive answer and I was given clomid and other drugs but none of it worked. I wasn’t living I was existing. My children mean the world to me and I find the idea that there are couples out there - people who would loving parents who are unable to access the treatment they need to have a family of their own utterly heartbreaking. It affected so many aspects of my life. I became obsessed. I fell out with family members and also with several of my friends. I spent a fortune on books about getting pregnant and on fertility vitamins. Every evening after work and on weekends I would be online looking for an answer as to why I wasn’t getting pregnant and searching for forum posts from women who had the same symptoms as me with the spotting who managed to have a baby and what they did the month they conceived. I kept a log of their posts. I spent £400 on a gadget where you stick a sensor under your arm and a machine tells you when you are most fertile. I was allergic to the pad that stuck it to my skin but I still used it. I’m sure most of it was a total rip off and I’m sure there is a market out there designed to extract money from vulnerable women who are as desperate as I was. I don’t understand this idea that the NHS should only be for cancer. Infertility affects your mental and physical health. I’ve no doubt in my mind that I never would have come to terms with it and that the stress and depression brought about by it would have had a significant impact on my mental health.

It is hard to find precise figures, but as far as I can tell from Googling, the NHS spends around £400m on IVF each year, which given that the budget for England is £122bn, is around 0.3% of the total spend. This seems to be approx. 40% of the IVF cycles done (e.g. the other 60% are privately paid for). I do not think there can possibly be figures on how many UK couples are doing IVF abroad, but given the price differential it's got to be quite a few.

So the absolute best case scenario of ending IVF today would be saving less than 0.5% of the budget (which would immediately be wiped out by the costs of NHS deliveries of multiples conceived in less regulated private clinics here and abroad).

What an irrational discussion this is.

I think I have a variation on your views. I had private ivf twice 16 years ago because I felt like, personally, it wasn't a medical imperative...unlike my cystectomy (and my more recent hysterectomy) and I could afford it. However, I did and still do believe, that perhaps it could be a means tested thing? I mean a bit like you don't have to pay for prescriptions if you receive benefits? I have never applied for dla for my ds1 either, even though I know children with the same disability who receive it, we don't need extra financial help,just because you could claim it doesn't mean you have to, same with nhs ivf.

I have endo. My gynae recommends pregnancy to help alleviate my agony, I.e. as treatment, but have low chances due to the condition. We’re also desperate to have a child & have been for three years now.

Due to OH already having a now adult child, we aren’t eligible for IVF where we live, yet we would if we moved house to another county.
I get that the NHS is stretched, but it’s the inconsistency across the country that is the kick in the teeth. Plus, it’s a treatment I’m being (theoretically*) being denied.

*i say theoretically as it’s not a guaranteed improvement according to my research, although my gynae thinks otherwise

I don’t understand how anyone can read about the experiences and devastating impact infertility has on people and resent 0.3% of the NHS budget being spent on it.

There is no logical basis for singling it out as being unsuitable for NHS funding.

What an irrational discussion this is.

And yet you engaged with it. I'm not suggesting starting a petition to Jeremy Hunt (I agree, there are far bigger budget drains on the NHS) but IVF is the one I'm talking about at the moment because of a recent infertility diagnosis.

Anyone here is free to start a thread on breast reduction/acne treatment/orthodontics, but this is the one I started.

Cuddling my wonderful IVF baby girl to sleep tonight- thank god for the NHS and sensitive, sensible people who appreciate the devastation infertility can cause.

I'm infertile and fell foul of the postcode lottery which is wrong wrong wrong. Either pay for everyone or no one. Notwithstanding my own infertility, I personally think pay for no one.

Ironically, the smokers and drinkers who need treatment will have paid over and above for their treatment in tobacco and alcohol duty. The NHS would be fucked if all the smokers gave up tomorrow.

The NHS is a universal health care system. It relies on everyone paying in and supporting it. If it covers only a narrow range of needs (however critical) then it is wholly unreasonable to expect people to universally pay in. Don’t forget that there is an alternative to the nhs - if you look to America, even many private health care providers include provision for ivf treatment. Create a system that only supports critical care and suppport for the nhs may wither away. It is about equitable, inclusive, solutions.

Is infertility a health care issue? No one dies of infertility.

There have been suicides due to infertility.

There was a similar thread on here about four years ago, OP - it stuck in my mind because DH and I had just gone through the humiliating process of asking his parents to lend us money to fund one cycle of IVF. We live in the only area in England that didn't fund any cycles of IVF on the NHS at the time, and we'd spent all our savings on buying our first house so we would have a secure home for our family. The OP of that thread was adamant that the NHS shouldn't fund any IVF treatment, not even for people who had become infertile after cancer treatment. Antenatal care should still be provided, she felt, because you were treating someone who already existed rather than spending NHS funds to create a new person.

After pages and pages of very similar debate to this one, she reluctantly agreed that if you had to pay taxes for other people's children (to fund their health care, schools etc), it was unfair that you couldn't have IVF on the NHS. Does that argument convince you?

Infertility is an illness, and it should be treated as such. You say in one of your posts that you're in your 20s - I wonder if you'll look back on this in five or ten years and realise how cruel your comments were.

infertility is not an illness!

But Sandy, we are not talking about the world. We are talking about the UK

Even just the UK. There would still be enough children born without IVF to pay future taxes.

Infertility is devastating though.

There are so many people who need charging for their use of the nhs.

There are millions of people who get free maternity care who have no right be be having a child at all.

There are millions more who cost the nhs vast quantities of cash because of nothing more than their own stupidity.

There is so much intrinsically wrong with the NHS that money is being washed down the drain every minute of every day.

It is impossible to make it fair for everyone. There are too many variants of everyone who is being treated to say that one group should receive more funding than another.

I have spent my whole life (57yrs) in the care of the nhs. I have had treatments and medications and operations all of which have been mentioned on this thread as not being medically necessary. Without them my life would have been shit. But I would not have died.

There is no fair way to fix the nhs sadly. But I think we should all be bloody grateful that it's therein the first place.

Ffs, I’m done with this thread and the stupid comments. The nhs provides treatment for millions of things you don’t die from. You don’t die from, say, not being able to speak, does that mean we shouldn’t fund speech therapy for children?

I fully believe in IVF I think it’s a wonderful thing (I thankfully didn’t need it) it’s a medical condition so the NHS should try to treat it. As far as it being “a want rather than a need” Just purely to play devils advocate here then maybe we shouldn’t pay for drug addicts, alcoholics, gastric band, smokers etc because technically some of those people could help themselves but they don’t

Endo,PCOS and depression are. Obesity isn't.

infertility is not an illness

No it's not. But it is a symptom of a medical problem. Therefore by default if you are infertile you are sick somewhere in your body.

Not being able to speak is very seriously debilitating for an already living human. Far more serious than infertility!