Payment Considerations by Kurt

This week we are planning out how to pay for IVF.  Since we do not have insurance coverage for IVF, we will need to have cash (or credit) to pay for the services needed.

The clinics we have used have required prepayment for the medical procedures expected to be performed.  This may not be enough to cover all medical bills, but our experience has been it is close or slightly above what was truly required.  Any over payments were refunded for the difference.  This prepayment does not cover the cost of medicines, so those have to be paid at the time of purchase.  Many clinics offer advice on where to buy medicines from pharmacies that are reliable and timely, as sometimes you may run low at key points in your cycle.  My wife used a pharmacy on the East Coast for our first IVF cycle as an example.

Some areas we have used to pay for IVF in the past has been saving in a Flexible Saving Account or Health Saving Account.  The thing I like about these is that they can be funded with pretax dollars.  The main disadvantages of these with IVF are that it can take a while to get there to fund them and paperwork.  For Flexible Saving Accounts, you have to use it that year or lose it and it is capped for amounts not enough to pay for all of IVF.  For Health Saving Accounts, it will take two to three years to have enough funds in them to cover the full cost of IVF.  One other note we have experienced is that you have to "float" the payment on a credit card (or line of credit) first and fill out paperwork with the plan in order to get reimbursement of these accounts.

I am sure you have your own ways you have saved to pay for IVF.  I would love to hear them from you.  This is part of our journey to find the missing piece of the puzzle.