shared risk program for ivf and taking a loan?

has anyone done a shared risk program for ivf? (it's a discount program where you buy 6 rounds of ivf and if none of them work, you get 70% of your money back)

does the program just cover the ivf/icsi or the medications, etc for it too?

and has anyone taken out a loan for it it?

our ins doesn't cover ivf.... just diagnosis and treatment...

plz share your experiences with me.

TIA!

Message edited 4/30/2010 2:47:14 PM.

Re: shared risk program for ivf and taking a loan?

bump

Re: shared risk program for ivf and taking a loan?

We did it. If your insurance covers anything - monitoring, drugs, etc, then they will adjust the price. I believe that if your ins covers nothing then they will add it in to the price, but you should double check that.

The program that we did included three fresh and three frozen cycles. They told me that they have criteria on who they accept and who they don't because, as with everything, they are trying to make money. So, they only want to accept people that they think will get pregnant quickly. That being said, if you do get accepted you can probably view it that the odds are in your favor to NOT prepay for all of these treatments. you kwim?

Either way, we did it, and I got pregnant on my first round of IVF which means we probably spent about $8k more than we would have if we had just done the pay as you go method. All in all I do not regret doing the program because it took a lot of stress off the financial aspect if we did have a couple of failed cycles.

It's really hard to say if this is worth it or not. we are not in a financial position that we would need to take out a loan so I can't really address your concerns about that.

Good luck.

Re: shared risk program for ivf and taking a loan?

thank you so much for responding!

our ins only covers diagnosis and treatment, not ivf.
i am going to apply for a predetermination after my hsg results are in to try to get our ins co to cover part of the ivf.

we have some male fertility issues, but my uterus is in good shape and i have plenty of eggs and i ovulate. my dr told us that only have a sperm issue is the best problem to have.
so we'll see what we learn after my hsg about my tubes...
i may have a LH deficiency, but i am told that is easy to fix and my ins would cover the meds for that.

i will check about the monitoring and the drugs! thanks!

Re: shared risk program for ivf and taking a loan?

Do you have any children yet? we have slight MF issues only and we did conceive naturally and have a 2 yr old son. I would hate to tell you not to do the program but your chances of success with IVF are very good if it's only MF issues. Like I said, we still did it and it did give me peace of mind and take some stress off.

Re: shared risk program for ivf and taking a loan?

I did the program and took out a loan from Capital One. I believe it cost just over $20,000. My meds were covered by insurance so they factored that into the cost. They also had different prices for doing ICSI and assisted hatching.

Capital One worked directly with the Shared Risk program so it was very easy to get the loan. Because we chose to pay it off quickly, 18 months, the interest was really low. Financially it made more sense to take the loan than to pay upfront because of the low interest.

I got pregnant on the first try too, so we wound up paying more than if we just payed for one cycle. I am still happy we did it this way since it took a lot of the pressure off knowing that we had more attempts if the first one failed.

Good Luck

Re: shared risk program for ivf and taking a loan?

thanks for your responses!

we don't have any other children. this would be our first and only.

i'll find out in the next week or so if there are any issues w/ me, in addition to the MF issues. i have to have blood drawn on CD 3 and then an hsg.

DH's numbers were very low, so he thinks that IUI won't do us any good.
but he said, since it's less expensive, he said we should try 2 rounds of clomid before going to IVF. the only part of that our ins would cover would be the ovidrel!

We can't afford to pay for IVF out of pocket, so we'd have to take a loan and it makes the most sense to do the shared risk so we get several chances to get it.

our ins doenst cover anything to do w/ ivf or any infertiilty procedures... no meds, no incycle diagnostic testing, no monitoring, nada....

if i end up having LH deficiency, our ins would cover the meds to fix that.

i called the shared risk program today and they said that if we go w/ their plan that gives us 4 cycles, there's no refund, but it covers monitoring.

as for the loan, we would have to do the 60 months.

Re: shared risk program for ivf and taking a loan?

Will that cover 4 fresh cycles? you should also find out if it is fresh and frozen. Frozen cycles are a LOT cheaper than fresh so if it's two fresh and two frozen make sure you figure out the cost difference if you pay as you go. Also, I would find out the policy for fresh vs. frozen cycles. for example, we had to do fresh, frozen, fresh, frozen, fresh, frozen, even if we had left over embryos from the fresh cycles. The nice thing is that if you run out of fresh cycles in that scenario you may still have some frozen embies to work with.

Also, if you are lucky enough to get pregnant the first round you may end up with some left over frozen embryos that you can use at a later date. Like I said earlier, the frozen cycles are much cheaper so it would be nice to have that as a future option.

I also just want to let you know that my husbands numbers were not great. our issue is mainly morphology but also volume is low, which led to low #s for the IUIs. We did however conceive very easily the first time around. I truly believe that MF issues can change for the better or worse over time much more easily than those probs that women have. So, don't give up hope no matter what happens. It only takes one little sperm to get up there and it does happen!!!

Re: shared risk program for ivf and taking a loan?

thanks lululu.
it's 2 fresh 2 frozen.