Infertility treatment's high price tag prompts doctors to deliver new financing options

Infertility specialists are turning to loan programs, discount packages, shared-risk plans and money-back guarantees to attract patients for whom the high cost of treatment has been out of reach.

"You begin to feel more like a car salesman," said Dr. Ronald Wilbois, medical director of the Infertility and IVF Center. "I sometimes ask myself, 'My God, what has medicine come to?' But the reality is that new business approaches are almost mandatory for survival."

The Infertility and IVF Center, a private clinic with offices at Missouri Baptist Medical Center in Town & Country, now offers a loan program through Capital One Bank. It allows patients to pay off their treatment costs over five years at an interest rate based on their credit score.

More than 6 million women and their partners in the United States struggle with infertility, defined as the inability to become pregnant after a year of trying, according to the most recent estimates available from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). That translates to about 10 percent of the reproductive-age female population.

Like other elective services, however, infertility treatments typically are not covered by insurance. Instead, most patients are required to pay the costs up front and out of pocket, and it's common for expenses to quickly rise into the tens of thousands of dollars.