AIBU to think it's unfair same sex couples can get IVF on the NHS but not single women?

[CateB78]

https://news.sky.com/story/fertility-inequality-how-single-women-are-facing-ivf-discrimination-and-financial-strain-12996293

endometriosis is an illness, having cancer is an illness (cancer patients have eggs removed before treatment), having blocks fallopian tubes is an illness etc etc.

It is absolutely 100% semantic, if you have two women with exactly the same factual problem: eg. Inability for my partner to produce sperm that gets me pregnant, for which the exact same treatment is required: eg, donor sperm + ivf, to fulfil the exact same desire/need : eg: to have a baby - and then you say, we’re funding you but not you, because yours is a “medical condition” and yours is a “biological condition”.

It already is. NHS treatments don’t provide the same medication and in many areas you get 1 cycle when most women need at least 3-4

DH cousin needed IVF - had to be IVF as his wife had no* *fallopian tubes - they got one shot on NHS after jumping though many humps and being in ideal age range late 20 both fit. Then they had to self fund - took several rounds and a lot of time to get their only child. They'd have loved another but couldn't afford the IVF fees.

IVF is already a very ration scare resource - I think wider boundaries will just mean less of it for all on NHS.

It is absolutely 100% semantic, if you have two women with exactly the same factual problem
The treatment is not offered to the woman who would carry the child but the other person's medical condition.

The reason they are the main or only one getting the treatment is only because men can't currently bare a child. If they could, it would be the infertile man who would be eligible to receive the treatment, not his medically fit partner.

There are age limits on NHS funded IVF though. At my clinic it’s 3 rounds if you’re under 40, and one round if you’re 40-42. So if you didn’t start TTC until 38, by the time you hit the 2 years unprotected sex that the clinic required before you could go on the waiting list, you would only be entitled to one funded round.

The only people being given IVF on the NHS should be people with a significant medical problem with causes infertility. Not healthy lesbians, and not healthy single women. Doctors exist to treat medical problems.

I’m infertile and have serious damage to my ovaries (caused incidentally by incompetent NHS care) but the NHS won’t give me free IVF because I have a child. So it fucks me off to see women with no medical problems demanding free medical treatment.

The treatment is not offered to the woman who would carry the child but the other person's medical condition.

that’s not true at all.
Are you following the conversation? We are discussing fertility treatments for couples where the man has azoospermia . It’s true Some forms of azoospermia can be treated with surgery, others can’t. Fertility treatment is still funded by nhs to enable the partner to get pregnant.

I don’t think it should be on the nhs at all.

Sure get testing and a diagnosis but then it should be private paid if you require ivf, a blocked tube or such things should be treated to be fixed but ivf should be fully personally funded.

I also knew someone who did fostering and was accepted for adoption as a single woman in her 40's. This was about 15 years ago. So I don't know if this has changed recently or maybe it is dependant on where you live

Guess it is by day 5 clinics can tell what is a good looking embryo. Obviously it doesn't guarantee not having a miscarriage but might decrease the chance.

The treatment is not offered to the woman who would carry the child but the other person's medical condition.

@vivainsomnia This is untrue. I am the main registered patient at my clinic, not my husband. I receive all communications in my name and they often forget to even copy him in, I have to remind them or forward things to him. They don't even see him or really seem to care if he's involved at all.

Is that a normal about? So the NHS spends about £60k per women for her chance to become a mother?

@BIossomtoes I likely never will have one, given my body has already rejected 5 pregnancies after years and years of trying to fall Pregnant.

@Kendodd I imagine that's cumulative. We had one failed round which cost £6k.

Fertility treatment is still funded by nhs to enable the partner to get pregnant
Most men with infertility are entitled to ICSI. When ICSI isn't even an option, which is now the exception rather than the norm, donor sperm is available. This is indeed questionable that it should be so. If anything, the NHS might decide to stop funding couples who fall in that category.

But again, it's not funded for the healthy person but the one with the issue. Again, it's the woman who has to go through the treatment because biologically only she can carry a child, but it's not for HER benefit.

I am the main registered patient at my clinic, not my husband
That's totally irrelevant to the reason why treatment is funded. It is funded because of your partner's condition. That's what triggers eligibility.

It's really not that hard to understand!

No it wouldn't be 60k

The NHS doesn't fund IVF until a woman gets pregnant. They fund so many rounds, this is the postcode lottery part - it might be 1, 2 or 3 rounds depending on various factors. So they don't keep going and going

The private clinics charge an absolute fortune for the drugs. I remember at one point one of the supermarket pharmacies was offering them more or less at cost for women going through IVF and the cost was 100s rather than 1000s so the NHS will get these drugs at a significantly cheaper cost than the private clinics charge patients for them. And not every patient will need the drugs or the full range of them.

60k generally represents more rounds of IVF than the NHS is ever going to offer currently

I'm not sure it's necessarily true that the NHS gets drugs more cheaply than individual consumers.

Obviously most drugs are prescription only so there isn't much overlap. But for drugs which can be purchased privately or supplied by the NHS, the NHS will pay whatever price it has managed to negotiate in its drug procurement, which may not be the best price.

I was basing that on the fact that some pharmacies were about to sell them at a significantly lower price, meaning they were available at a lower price than the price the private clinics charges the patient

I would be very suprised if the NHS was buying them in at the cost point the private clinic was selling them out at

That said my IVF was quite some years ago now and looking at clinic costs they appear to be suggesting average medication costs a lot lower than they were at the time so the price point may be more similar whether private or NHS nowadays

single parent families aren’t something to aim for

far better a child is brought up by a single parent who has had to give serious thought to her situation prior to even getting pregnant than the average just bumbling along in life, having children because that’s what couples do, surely?

or are you one of those who just can’t cope when single mums manage perfectly well without swinging a man on their arm?

I used to do government procurement, but not in the health sector, and sometimes they really do not get good prices despite their purchasing power.

Imagine it like this. A pharmacy sells about 20 boxes of paracetamol per day so they need 600 boxes per month. If you're buying paracetamol wholesale but in relatively small quantities you just buy it from whichever supplier offers the best price. Whereas the NHS needs paracetamol in quantities no supplier will be able to offer without a dedicated long term contract, so they will have to go out to tender, and only suppliers who are capable of procuring such huge quantities of paracetamol will be able to bid, and they will all know more or less how much their competitors will be charging, so they can hike their prices up knowing that the NHS can't just tell them to go fuck themselves and buy paracetamol from wherever the little pharmacy is getting it.

So the little pharmacy, and potentially the consumer, might be getting paracetamol cheaper than the NHS gets it, despite the NHS having greater buying power.

If anything, the NHS might decide to stop funding couples who fall in that category.

@vivainsomnia There's no indication that the NHS are considering stopping funding couples who falling to that category.

On the contrary, the article linked says that the NHS are increasing funding for same sex couples because they agree with the position you are arguing against - because not to do so is discriminatory against same sex couples.

Im going to ask a very crass question - revealing my ignorance. BUT - why would a member of a lesbian couple without medical issues not be able to be impregnated with doner sperm directly - ie not ivf, just a medical turkey-baster type scenario?
There cant be THAT many lesbian couples where both women have fertility issues significant enough to need ivf, so would it not be a better use of money just to get on with it rather than employ committes to discuss it...?

Chances of IUI (artificial insemination) working are about 8-10% each go, even for fertile women. Not very widely known until you are going through it.
IVF is much more successful.
Many women will try a few rounds of IUI and then go onto IVF. Some go straight to IVF and it can ultimately be cheaper to have one or two rounds of IVF than 8-10 rounds of IUI.

One reason is that same sex couples want to mix their genetics by having one woman supply and egg and the other carry the pregnancy so her epigenetics influences the embryo. Hence the relative attraction of IVF.

IUI also has a fairly low success rate compared to IVF.

you can't fix a blocked/broken fallopian tube... and you can't replace removed fallopian tubes.

I had a fallopian tube removed following an ectopic pregnancy. The ectopic pregnancy was my first pregnancy.