Abstract
There are disparities in the prevalence of infertility, access to care for infertility services and infertility treatment outcomes in minority women compared to Caucasian women. The disparities in access appear to affect African American women and Hispanic women substantially with studies showing that despite a high prevalence of infertility in these groups, they underutilize infertility services. The cost of infertility treatments has been suggested as a cause of its inaccessibility to financially constrained patients who may benefit from it. Despite in vitro fertilization’s widespread use and growing success to treat infertility in the USA, it remains predominantly a privately funded service because many health insurance companies exclude it from coverage. In an effort to address this inequity in care, advocates began lobbying their state legislatures to mandate health insurance coverage since the 1980s. Today, 15 states have state laws mandating some form of coverage for infertility treatment. Despite mandated and comprehensive insurance coverage in a few states, there continues to be a disparity in access to infertility services with individuals accessing these services being Caucasian, highly educated, and wealthy. Further studies are required to understand the effect of current state mandates on access to care for all assisted reproductive technologies.
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Thornton, K., Fru, K.N., Ibrahim, Y. (2013). How Can We Bridge the Gap? Role of Insurance Mandate. In: Sharara, F. (eds) Ethnic Differences in Fertility and Assisted Reproduction. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7548-4_18
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7548-4_18
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