Better Health Care Might Have Saved Jon and Kate

Were IVF coverage mandated, sextuplets may have been fewer

By Matt Cantor, Newser Staff

Posted Jun 28, 2009 10:08 AM CDT

(Newser) – 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.”

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The photo released by TLC shows the Gosselin family posing for a photo at a party to celebrate the sextuplets fifth birthday. Mom Kate is at left and dad Jon on the far right. (AP Photo/TLC, Michael Pilla)

FILE-In this publicity image released by TLC, reality TV stars, Jon Gosselin, right, and his wife Kate Gosselin, from the TLC series, "Jon & Kate Plus 8," are shown in Hawaii. So many cheaters, so little... (AP Photo/TLC, Mark Arbeit,File)

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Maybe no marriage could have survived that many Us Weekly covers or that many cameras. But really, it seems to have been the burden of being "plus 8," when all they wanted was "plus 3."
- Liza Mundy

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Better Health Care Might Have Saved Jon and Kate