In a story reported on Medscape, the AMA adopted a resolution to urge insurers to cover fertility preservation in cancer patients.
If insurers cover costs for reconstruction after a cancer patient has a mastectomy and costs for storing blood in case a cancer patient needs a subsequent transfusion, why shouldn’t they cover expenses for fertility preservation when a young cancer patient requests it?
That is what members of the Michigan delegation wanted to know. They asked the American Medical Association (AMA) to support lobbying for federal legislation that would require insurers to cover fertility preservation when cancer treatments could result in infertility.
After several supportive comments from delegates here at the AMA 2013 Annual Meeting, the measure was adopted.
According to Steven Chen, MD, the delegate from the AMA Young Physicians Section and a breast surgeon from the City of Hope National Medical Center in Duarte, California, the approval emphasizes the need for insurers to acknowledge that cancer treatments can cause infertility.
We should treat possible infertility as a medical condition, as we do with other treatment-related adverse effects, “as opposed to someone choosing to do in vitro fertilization,” he told Medscape Medical News.
Dr. Chen said that freezing eggs can run from $10,000 to $15,000 and that sperm banking runs in the hundreds of dollars. These costs, which are not covered by insurance, keep doctors from suggesting preservation and patients from seeing it as a viable option.
The timing of the AMA support is good because a bill is working its way through the California legislature that requires insurers to cover expenses for standard fertility preservation services when a necessary medical treatment may directly or indirectly cause iatrogenic infertility