New to Oz, need fertility advice!

Medicare does cover parts of Ivf too. I think but not 100% sure if you reach max limit of your payments within the year then Medicare covers any other cycles. although I think they are looking at changing it to a max of 3 Ivf cycles.

Welcome to OZ - I am in Central QLD, about 6 hours North of Brisbane.Firstly, Medicare - Are you residents? If you are and have a Medicare card then all Emergency Services and essential services provided in a Public Hospital will free of charge - including childbirth. Private Healthcare - Optional. My Accountant basically put it like this: if your combined income is more than $180,000 pa then you need Private Health Insurance otherwise you’re going to be stung at Tax time. I’ve recently just changed to Frank which covers reproductive services and I’ve paid the extra for Pregnancy. For the birth of my 2nd child 4 years ago I didn’t have Private Health Insurance and I opted to go Private ... all up I paid just under $10k (wouldn’t change a thing).In the last 2 years we’ve had 6 IVFs ... unfortunately all unsuccessful. My first five were with a Low Cost clinic on the Sunny Coast. For my 6th IVF I changed to Primary IVF in Brisbane which is Bulk Billed. Apart from the consultations and medications and Sperm Freezing (optional), everything else was Bulk Billed and I only paid a gap fee of $600. I hope some of this info helps 😊

-yes it’s free to give birth in a public hospital -depending on your hospital cover you will have an annual excess to pay once a year when you use a private hospital. So say your egg collection is 600 and antethetist 500 - once you’ve paid the excess for the year you would only pay some of the anesthetist fee because medicare would give you money back.-If you go private hospital you will be paying for your choice of obgyn and anesthetist costs if you have a cesarean -if you have a car accident and need care you will be taken to a public hospital and treated for free-honestly i’ve found medicare fairly unhelpful for ivf cycles and most of my money was refunded by medicare. Medicare will give you money back private health insurance is so limited with ivf treatments.i’ve found for myself the “extras” that i can claim on my Medicare helpful such as physiotherapy, dental and remedial massage. They have an annual limit but for example with my cover i get $250 to claim a year on physio treatment which i use! Good luck and hope this has helped you.

Hi catrin, I believe that it's free to give birth in the public system. But if there are complications with mum or bub that some of those kinds of costs aren't cowered by Medicare. Not 100% sure about this or costs of private health. I have very basic cover for pregnancy but if we go down the IVF route we might need to get higher insurance. Though some IVF clinics are more cost effective than others.. Hopefully this helps a little. Good luck and Welcome to Oz!