Min. stim IVF and Natural Cycle IVF -- can you do these with insurance policies?

[Anonymous]

It looks like from the Muasher website and the Dominion website that these procedures are offered to people without insurance. We have insurance with a dollar amount cap, and for fear reasons, I'm leaning toward these types of procedures but I'm not sure if they are covered. I haven't (obviously) consulted with these places yet, but I'm getting close (TTC 15 months, no luck).

[Anonymous]

Everyone's insurance is different, so you would need to ask your insurance company the question of what is covered. My insurance has a max dollar a mount and covers four procedures, whether IUI, IVF or Natural Cycle (regardless of cost.) I went with IVF, the most expensive, and when my insurance runs out maybe I will try Natural Cycle because it is less expensive. So my impression is that it is good option for people who aren't insured because it is less expensive.

[Anonymous]

My insurance covered natural cycle IVF, which was billed by Dominion at a regular IVF rate (according to them there are no billing codes for natural cycle IVF).

[Anonymous]

Right, If you use your insurance benefits for NCIVF Dominion will bill your insurance for regular IVF. Be careful though, because it could end up costing you more to use your insurance plus you will be using up those benefits in case you need to move onto regular IVF in the future. In my case, 50% (my share) would have been more expensive than just paying out of pocket. ($5,400-including mock embryo transfer).

[Anonymous]

I have Dr. Gordon and he recently answered a question on Fertilegrounds.com about this issue. if you have limited $ amount for IVF it's probably more cost effective to do stimulated IVF.

[Anonymous]

FWIW, I went to a big clinic in Atlanta and they charged the same fee for NCIVF as stim IVF, I guess from their point of view it's not that much different, except for the freezing embryos and storage part.

[Anonymous]

My understanding is that, at Dominion at least, natural cycle is less expensive because you don't need daily monitoring throughout the medication period to constantly tweak the levels and to check for signs of hyperstimulation. I did a natural cycle FET there a few months ago, and I went in for monitoring only 4 times during the whole cycle, as opposed to almost daily for 3 weeks on my stimulated IVF cycle.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My understanding is that, at Dominion at least, natural cycle is less expensive because you don't need daily monitoring throughout the medication period to constantly tweak the levels and to check for signs of hyperstimulation. I did a natural cycle FET there a few months ago, and I went in for monitoring only 4 times during the whole cycle, as opposed to almost daily for 3 weeks on my stimulated IVF cycle.

Actually, when I was doing NCIVF, I was going as often for monitoring (if not even more frequently) than for my medicated IVF. Since NCIVF is unmedicated plus there's only one egg to be retrieved, they need to watch very carefully what's gong on with your body. With medicated IVF your hormones are suppressed, so if your eggs are growing at an expected rate, you don't need to go every day. At least it's my experience.