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As a reproductive medicine specialist in the US, I often find talking with patients about the cost and coverage of fertility care a discouraging discussion. Despite infertility being an incredibly common and devastating disease, the extremely effective treatments that have been developed to enable infertile individuals and couples to have children are often not affordable and are therefore out of reach. This made me wonder: Why is the cost of care for some diseases covered by insurance while others are not? Instead of criticizing payers for consigning infertility to the “not covered” bin, I choose to be curious. Why this disconnect?
Infertility is clearly a disruption to the normal functioning of the body that results in harm or morbidity. But despite this clear fact, it took the American Medical Association more than eight years to join the World Health Organization in defining infertility as a ...
