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Medication prices are often cited as the main reason healthcare is so expensive, with an August study predicting that costs will rise another 3.8% within the next year.
If you zoom in on in vitro fertilization (IVF) medications, the numbers are even worse. In fact, a new report from drug discount company GoodRx has found that drug prices overall have risen 37% and the cost of IVF meds has jumped 84% in the last 10 years.
In 2014, the average cost for IVF medications was $696.85. Today, the average cost is $1,279.20, Tori Marsh, director of research at GoodRx, told Healthcare Brew.
“A lot of these medications are not covered by insurance,”Marsh told Healthcare Brew. “What that means is [IVF patients are] going to be exposed to these really high list prices, and so that’s why we wanted to zoom in on IVF. We wanted to see how much prices were climbing, really, as a proxy, to understand how impacted those who are going through this process are in terms of affordability.”
Price of labor. An IVF procedure can run anywhere from $15,000 to $30,000 depending on where it is done and what the patient requires. Drug prices make up about 35% of that cost, Forbes Health reported.
The rise in cost, according to the GoodRx report, is attributed to the drugs being expensive to make, the limited insurance coverage of IVF medications since they’re often not considered “medically necessary,” and the high demand for IVF treatments. Some of the medications included in the report are Follistim AQ, Gonal-F, Menopur, and Repronex.
Having better insurance coverage of these medications and more generic options for them would help drive down costs, Marsh said. For instance, there is a generic option for infertility drug clomiphene, which runs cheaper than the name-brand counterpart Clomid, according to GoodRx.
“Unfortunately with IVF medications,” she said, “there’s not a lot of generic availability. Most of these are brand-only drugs.”
Conversations around IVF have circulated in political discourse of late, especially after the overturning of Roe v. Wade, and concerns have grown about the future availability of reproductive services.
Senate Republicans blocked an IVF bill on September 17 that would have protected IVF at the federal level.