OPINION
8
Better Health Care Might Have Saved Jon and Kate
Were IVF coverage mandated, sextuplets may have been fewer
By Matt Cantor
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Posted Jun 28, 09 10:08 AM CDT
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(Newser)
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Could better health care coverage have saved Jon and Kate? Maybe, writes Liza Mundy in the Washington Post, explaining that the Gosselins opted for a cheaper fertility treatment in their quest for one more baby after having twins—and got six kids. Had their health insurer been required to pay for in vitro fertilization, "the most sophisticated, controlled, and expensive form of fertility treatment," they would have likely ended up with fewer children and a normal, reality-TV-free wedded life.
A mandate for insurers to pay for IVF might be tough to achieve, given the high costs of health care reform—but if women of child-bearing age were covered, it would mean “fewer high-order multiples, healthier children, less exhausted parents,” Mundy writes. Plus, “it would even the reproductive odds, giving middle-class and lower-income Americans access to treatment that is currently reserved for the well-off or the unusually well insured.”