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Monday, September 02, 2002About 15,000 test-tube babies are born in the United States each year, at a cost of roughly $40,000 per child. More than 71,000 test-tube baby attempts were studied by the team, led by Dr. Tarun Jain. The team found that while 31.8 percent of the embryo transfers produced a baby in states with no coverage, the success rate declined to 28.5 percent when the insurance coverage was complete. Among the pregnancies, 11.2 percent produced at least three or more fetuses among women with no coverage, compared to 9.7 percent for women with full coverage. Women with full coverage were just as likely to have twins as those without. ..."The economic impact of multiple births on society is tremendous," the researchers said. In 1991, because of the higher likelihood of complications, the cost of delivering twins was 4 times higher than for delivering a single child. It was 11 times higher for triplets. Although fewer women would have multiple children if all states required insurance plans to cover in vitro fertilization, the researchers said, the additional women who took advantage of the coverage would probably mean more multiple births -- and their associated costs --in the long run. In an editorial in the Journal, Dr. David Guzick of the University of Rochester School of Medicine in New York said more work is needed "to quantify the benefits and costs of mandatory coverage." In truth, the differences are so small between the no-coverage states and the complete-coverage states, only one to three percentage points differences, you have to wonder if any of this even matters. Looking at population studies to determine whether an elective procedure like in vitro fertilization deserves full insurance coverage is in itself a questionable approach. The bottom line is that requiring such coverage only ends up increasing the insurance premiums for everyone else in the state. posted by Sydney on 9/02/2002 11:15:00 AM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
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