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SALT LAKE CITY — One in seven Utah couples struggles with infertility, but many cannot afford the high cost of infertility treatments. A new bill is moving forward on Capitol Hill to help with that.
Advocate Tiffany Alleman has helped 14 couples find the financing for infertility treatment. She said for every one of those, there are 50 more who cannot afford it.
“And that's why this bill is important, even as a measure of hope and support and a step in the right direction that family is important in Utah,” she said.
Alleman and her husband had their three children with help of treatments.
"It's truly one of the hardest things I had to go through. When you get married you assume you can have children easily and free and when you want them. It didn't work out that way for me," she said.
HB347 would let people opt-in to insurance coverage, like vision or dental. And it would let insurance companies use the $4,000 mandated adoption coverage for infertility treatments instead, if a couple wanted it.
“Infertility is a diagnosed disease. It is scientific," Alleman said.
"Seventy-five percent of infertile couples can actually be treated for under $2,000 to $3,000,” she added. “Those are the couples that don't need to go through in-vitro. The problem is you don't know until you go down that path.”
She said another 25 percent of infertile couples need the more expensive, more invasive in-vitro fertilization.
