Fertility clinics with money-back guarantees - yay or nay?

The cost of IVF can be extremely high everyone knows that, and if you are considering IVF treatment, all the financial stress might will give you a headache! When you come across fertility clinics that have money-back guarantees that promise you all or part of the cost of IVF treatment back if you fail to get pregnant, it is easy to be tempted. What are the implications of such "shared risk" or "refund guarantee" programs?

Not all IVF money-back programs are the same, but they all operate according to the same principles: if you do not end up pregnant after a number of cycle of invitro fertilization, the patient gets part or all of the cost of the treatment refunded to them. The attraction of such an offer for the patient is crystal clear. But why do fertility clinics make such an offer? What is in it for them? A quick examination of one fertility clinic's IVF money-back guarantee plan reveals that such programs are not quite the bargain they seem to be.

One Chicago fertility clinic has three bands of IVF money-back plans at three different prices. The younger the woman undergoing IVF, the cheaper the money-back program is. Women who are 37 and 38 years old pay most, and money-back programs are not available for women older than that. Therefore, the women who are least likely to get pregnant pay most, and those most likely to get pregnant pay least. If a refund is offered for failure to get pregnant, that couple is presumably not included in the fertility clinic success rates.

Now, we can really see how these plans could benefit the clinics that offer them. Questions have been raised about the ethical aspects of money-back guarantees, and we can also ask ourselves what we really gain by using these programs. Also see our advice on how to stop embryo mix-ups from happening to you.