Tara Lipinski - infertility podcast

[Anonymous]

Has anyone else been listening to it? It’s really good. She and her husband do it together and they gave a nice rapport.

Man has she had a rough go of it. It took them 5 years to have their child - including 8 retrievals, 6 failed transfers, 4 miscarriages, 2 surgeries for her endometriosis, and 1 surrogacy.

What do you think this cost?! I’d love to know. Amy guesstimates?

[Anonymous]

It's pretty easy to do the math. At least 240K for the retrievals and $150K for the surrogate.

[Anonymous]

We did 9 retrievals, 6 transfers, had one miscarriage, and between various different types of fertility benefits and insurance coverage, spent about $70K. But agreed: the surrogacy costs would be at least $100K.

[Anonymous]

Loved this podcast (and hope it continues).

I believe she mentioned in the first episode that she had sought fertility insurance coverage before they started their infertility odyssey. She was 35 and was going the IVF route to preserve fertility and to be able to time her pregnancy given her professional duties. She didn't know that she had any fertility issues but she was advised from a friend to get insurance. That said, I'm sure her journey wasn't cheap and for sure, surrogacy is very expensive.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Has anyone else been listening to it? It’s really good. She and her husband do it together and they gave a nice rapport.

Man has she had a rough go of it. It took them 5 years to have their child - including 8 retrievals, 6 failed transfers, 4 miscarriages, 2 surgeries for her endometriosis, and 1 surrogacy.

What do you think this cost?! I’d love to know. Amy guesstimates?

Just the surrogacy part cost us $100,000 about 5 years ago. I’d imagine costs have gone up since.

[Anonymous]

I’m curious how you get fertility insurance coverage? My Dh and I both worked at small companies and none of the policies had any sort of coverage. We had success without resorting to a surrogate but spent $260k. It was brutal

[Anonymous]

If you live in Maryland, the health exchange insurance is *amazing* You have 3 attempts per live birth, but they count an attempt as a retrieval AND transfer. Until you do a transfer, a retrieval doesn't count as an attempt. If making embryos is your problem, this is incredible. The drugs are covered as copays, so super cheap (except HGH, if your clinic uses that; it's not covered at all), and the for the procedures, we only paid for the surgical site fee and a copay. It doesn't cover genetic testing, but everything is else is covered, so paying the testing fees was more manageable. We also had Progyny insurance through an employer one year, which is supposed to be the best option available, and we paid more with that than the year we had insurance with BCBS through the exchange.