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Conception

When's the best time to get pregnant? Use our interactive ovulation calculator to work out when you're most fertile and most likely to conceive.

Original poster

Disgusted with IVF Charging.

184 replies

POP2005 · 07/01/2004 11:07

My wife and I have been trying for a baby for around 3 years, at the moment she is taking Clomid to assist with Ovulation.

We are hopeful that the Clomid will be a sucsess, but we have been exploring all avenues. I stumbled across the HFEA website that lists all assisted conception units in the UK and I was shocked to see the NHS charging first time patients for IVF treatments.

Searching for some kind of campaign on the net was fruitless but through search engines I found many discussions on the matter and I was shocked to see the amount of hatred people have been spouting on various discussion boards about the cost of providing free IVF on the NHS for childless couples, they estimate the cost at £400m.

£1,500 seems to be the average cost (not including drugs) and for a childless couple, intially, this is a small price to pay as we are desperate to be parents but where does it stop?

I have even seen adverts from loan shaks offering IVF loans to desperate couples.

We could end up in extreme debt and still have no baby at the end of it.

Yet if I was to drink myself into oblivion and screw up my liver the treatment and operation would be free, hell, if I decided to have my gender "reassigned" I could even get a free sex-swap op on the NHS, smokers are offered free cessation assistance on the NHS and we all know that cancer treatments for smokers are also free.

Infertility in most cases is not self inflicted yet couples are forced into debt to pay for treatments - people who have made themselves ill through stupidity are treated free.

The estimated £400m cost is a small price for the goverment as IVF children grow up to be taxpayers.

Its time to End the postcode lottery now.

OP posts:
Twinkie · 07/01/2004 14:35

Message withdrawn

M2T · 07/01/2004 14:39

Fairymum - I think they class heart attacks and strokes in there..... which a lot of nonsmokers die from too. Perhaps its 1 in 3 smokers die from an illness which COULD be smoking related?

POP2005 - You are obviously passionate about this and why shouldn't you be. It means an awful lot, if not everything to you. But you can't expect to dismiss facts when you have no stats to back it up. It just sounds argumentative and childish otherwise.

aloha · 07/01/2004 14:40

Tigermoth, that's exactly what I thought was fair. One or two goes for those for whom it offers a reasonable chance of success after other treatments have failed and after a reasonable period of waiting.

aloha · 07/01/2004 14:42

I think in the smoking argument you also have to factor in that if smokers die younger, they cost the state less in pensions/benefits/care homes/treatment for chronic conditions of old age. And I loathe smoking!

zebra · 07/01/2004 14:43

My mom died of smoking related illnesses -- not cancer but circulatory failure. Applies to 1, perhaps 2 of her siblings, too. Plus another aunt died of lung cancer 10 years after she gave up the fags. Am speechless when anybody tries to justify smoking as a 'good' thing because of tax revenues.

Anyway, draft NICE guidelines are that women under 40 should be offered somewhere between 2 & 6 goes at IVF on NHS, but the final guidance won't be made official until February, and even when it becomes official, it will take time to implement that in all Health Authorities. Which makes this thread, if it's supposed to be about principles and not a specific case, rather redundant, don't you think?

Twinkie · 07/01/2004 14:48

Message withdrawn

M2T · 07/01/2004 14:50

Zebra - I don't think anyone was suggesting smoking was a good thing???! Just correcting POP2005's figures about money spent on treating smokers compared to money input from tobacco tax. Is all!

Dadslib · 07/01/2004 14:56

Message withdrawn

Northerner · 07/01/2004 15:00

DL, chant along with me 'i AM A NON SMOKER, i AM A NON SMOKER, i AM A NON SMOKER'

M2T · 07/01/2004 15:00

lol DL. So is Twinkie and Northerner and few others and it's been ages since I even thought about one. Very pleased with myself I am.

Twinkie · 07/01/2004 15:01

Message withdrawn

tabitha · 07/01/2004 15:01

Zebra, personally I hate smoking not smokers, who as I said before are mostly addicted and have been since they were too young and stupid to know any better. I just get annoyed when people use them as an 'easy target' and get on their high horses about 'self-inflicted illnesses' when, in reality possibly the majority of illnesses are self inflicted.
I'm pregnant and that was 'self inflicted' (well, alright not completely self-inflicted, dh did play a small part) but I still expect the NHS to provide me with ante-natal care etc.

Helsbels · 07/01/2004 15:01

If we can all agree that every life is precious and every life is worth trying to save and that everyone who would be decent parents deserves a chance to at least try to conceive we can move forward.If we can forget the amount of money the NHS spends on trying to improve lives (not always wisely and certainly not always fairly but always with the end goal of improving someones health or quality of life as in the case of IVF), perhaps we ought to be more concerned with the amount of money things like Beagle2 cost to not even make it to Mars a week before the exact same thing was launched from the USA who are meant to be our friends, perhaps then we could have a look at what was really important and how we ought to spend money. NHS tourists do cost an absolute bloody fortune, women turn up 38 + weeks pregnant so we can't send them home. The majority of us pay our taxes, maybe POP2005 won't cost the NHS money for heart surgery or hip replacements in years to come (fingers croseed POP)so maybe this is how he should have his share of the pot. Any money spent to make people better is well spent. A lot of us forget how lucky we are that if we have to call an ambulance we don't have to provide insurance certificates before they take us to hospital where qualified personnel will look after us. Sorry... it just annoys me how much cash we squander (as a nation) on stuff that just is not important, how much we spend on asylum seekers etc. Perhaps it is time to start looking after ourselves.

Twinkie · 07/01/2004 15:02

Message withdrawn

zebra · 07/01/2004 15:03

Sorry, didn't mean to make it sound like I was replying to anything specific claimed on this thread, but focusing on sums leads there definitely some smokers say "Well, I've paid more in tax than I will cost the NHS, so I have every right to treatment on the NHS" as though the costs to NHS were the only cost to society, or tax the only way to look at the tradeoffs.

Dadslib: would you like another horror story about how smokers die? I didn't mention my chain-smoking step-grandfather and the cancers found in 4 places in his body, any one of which was going to be fatal in itself? Lung cancer wasn't one of them, funny enough. He was only about 55 at the time, too.

Twinkie · 07/01/2004 15:07

Message withdrawn

Northerner · 07/01/2004 15:08

I'm gonna start a new thread for the ex smokers.

Helsbels · 07/01/2004 15:08

Yes - me too Twinkie, if they are a genuine case I would happily support them, what I really meant was the amount of money spent on red tape generally, they are just a case in point (please don't take issue with the use of 'they'!

Dadslib · 07/01/2004 15:09

Message withdrawn

CountessDracula · 07/01/2004 15:10

None of this is helping POP2005 in his quest for IVF though is it?

Pop did you see my post re the egg donation for free IVF?

Dadslib · 07/01/2004 15:14

Message withdrawn

zebra · 07/01/2004 15:18

I already pointed out that NICE are revising NHS guidance on IVF treatment, and the new guidelines would probably resolve POP2005's problems, although not as soon as he would like, I imagine.

I know we'll never get a proper calm debate about this... but are there really that many 'NHS tourists' taking advantage in this country? I know that emergency medical treatment will always be on offer, but presumably the 'tourists' aren't after that, or they wouldn't be will enough to make the journey over here in the first place? I'm an immigrant, too, you see, and it was explained carefully that I only had rights to use NHS... either because of the special work permit I had or once I started paying NI. Certainly it didn't come just automatically because I was in the country.

I have a lot of trouble believing this is a 'big' problem for the NHS, but am willing to be corrected, if anyone knows any real figures.

M2T · 07/01/2004 15:23

Oh dadslib - You always have to make out there is this huge male/female divide on Mumsnet. The only one bickering about that is YOU!

CountessDracula · 07/01/2004 15:25

Oh god here we go.....

Tinker · 07/01/2004 15:26

Government cracks down on NHS tourists
30 Dec 2003

The government today launched a crackdown on so-called "NHS tourists" in the UK. According to Health Secretary Dr John Reid, thousands of people a year are taking their holidays in NHS facilities, including hospitals, doctors' surgeries and managers' offices, costing the taxpayer billions of pounds.

"There is absolutely no excuse for people trying to take their holidays in NHS facilities," he said. "A hospital is a medical facility where doctors and nurses and managers work – it is not Blackpool beach!"

Dr Reid said new regulations would stop the expensive trend. From the New Year, security guards will be placed outside all entrances to NHS buildings with equipment similar to that seen in airports. They will scan all incoming "patients", checking for telltale signs of tourism. "This might be something as small as a bucket and spade or as large as a collection of leather suitcases packed with clothes," Dr Reid warned. "The guards will remain vigilant and prevent anyone who looks like a tourist from entering NHS facilities."

"The NHS is there for everyone, but it must not be misused by the minority," he continued. "If these people want to have a holiday then they should go to a proper holiday destination, like Egypt where the Prime Minister is at the moment, or a caravan park where Margaret Beckett goes."

Health experts say the problem came to a head when NHS tourists, fed up with the crowded conditions in hospitals, started taking their holidays in managers' offices, and even at the Department of Health in London. "Dr Reid arrived for work one day and found a family from Birmingham camped out in his office," said Douglas Ramsbottom of Health Tourism Monthly. "They were cooking breakfast on a small gas stove, which set the fire alarm off, and had started a toilet in his wastepaper bin. He wasn't best pleased and decided enough was enough."

The government is now pleading with coach companies to discontinue their popular "hospital tour" weekend breaks.