WEBVTT - Misconception: Money Money Money 0:00:00.600 --> 0:00:02.600 All of our customer service representatives. 0:00:02.600 --> 0:00:03.640 They're currently having others. 0:00:03.840 --> 0:00:05.320 This is what it's always like, well. 0:00:05.320 --> 0:00:07.680 For the next available representatives. 0:00:08.920 --> 0:00:13.160 Before fully committing to this whole egg freezing thing, I 0:00:13.200 --> 0:00:15.760 figured I should probably figure out what it was going 0:00:15.840 --> 0:00:19.880 to cost me. Yeah, it's Kristin Brown, and so I 0:00:19.960 --> 0:00:23.640 called up a fertility benefit provider. Yeah, I am interested 0:00:23.680 --> 0:00:27.120 in egg freezing, and it's my understanding that I can use. 0:00:27.720 --> 0:00:29.680 I never actually did figure out how much it would 0:00:29.680 --> 0:00:34.720 cost me, but I did learn something very interesting. While 0:00:34.720 --> 0:00:37.560 health insurance in the US generally doesn't cover IVF or 0:00:37.560 --> 0:00:41.120 egg freezing, even when it does, there are some big exceptions, 0:00:41.800 --> 0:00:45.720 exceptions that can make it way more expensive. Oh really 0:00:45.800 --> 0:00:49.760 if I did embryos. Oh wow, So it would actually 0:00:49.800 --> 0:00:53.880 potentially be cheaper. If I froze embryos with my partner step, 0:00:54.320 --> 0:00:56.440 the cost of freezing and storing them would be covered. 0:00:57.040 --> 0:01:00.000 If I froze eggs on my own, it wouldn't be. 0:01:00.960 --> 0:01:04.839 I found this shocking. Even with great benefits, my relationship 0:01:04.880 --> 0:01:09.080 status was a potential obstacle to affordable fertility care. It 0:01:09.120 --> 0:01:11.880 was a stark contrast to the image I was seeing online. 0:01:12.480 --> 0:01:15.000 We believe that going to the doctor should feel like 0:01:15.000 --> 0:01:17.800 a visit with a trusted friend. If knowledge is powered, 0:01:17.840 --> 0:01:20.800 then a fertility information shouldn't still be a mystery. 0:01:20.959 --> 0:01:24.199 Our mission is to enable fertility care for all people, 0:01:24.480 --> 0:01:29.800 regardless of age, sexual orientation, gender identity, race, marital status, 0:01:29.920 --> 0:01:33.880 or geography. The fertility themed YouTube videos and Instagram content 0:01:33.959 --> 0:01:35.920 making its way into my feed as a thirty something 0:01:36.000 --> 0:01:38.959 woman made it seem like this whole process would be 0:01:39.040 --> 0:01:44.520 empowering or something. In reality, this was no picnic. Just 0:01:44.640 --> 0:01:47.440 to break it down, freezing eggs would require me to 0:01:47.480 --> 0:01:50.760 self inject high doses of hormones multiple times a day 0:01:50.840 --> 0:01:53.960 to ramp up my egg production. Then a doctor would 0:01:53.960 --> 0:01:56.360 have to surgically remove those eggs in what's known as 0:01:56.400 --> 0:01:59.640 a retrieval to make embryos, those eggs would have to 0:01:59.640 --> 0:02:02.240 be furtile and a lab And if I went down 0:02:02.240 --> 0:02:05.200 the road of doing IVF, that would involve weeks of 0:02:05.240 --> 0:02:08.680 more drugs thawing those embryos, and a doctor implanting them 0:02:08.680 --> 0:02:12.440 in my uterus, which still might not work. And I 0:02:12.520 --> 0:02:15.000 noticed that none of what I was seeing really touched 0:02:15.040 --> 0:02:18.800 on how expensive all of this is. No one seemed 0:02:18.800 --> 0:02:20.359 to want to tell me how much it was going 0:02:20.400 --> 0:02:24.280 to cost. I started to wonder who could afford this? 0:02:25.160 --> 0:02:27.440 On what lengths do people go to when they can't. 0:02:28.320 --> 0:02:39.799 I'm Kristen B. Brown, and this is misconception. Money isn't 0:02:39.840 --> 0:02:43.960 the only problem. Sometimes even getting an infertility diagnosis as 0:02:43.960 --> 0:02:47.880 a major obstacle. That was the case for Regina Townsend. 0:02:48.360 --> 0:02:51.120 My periods were raging, my hormones were out of whack. 0:02:51.880 --> 0:02:54.919 I had mistres cycles that lasted upwards from sixty to 0:02:55.080 --> 0:02:55.959 one hundred days. 0:02:56.400 --> 0:02:58.840 She's telling me about a really frustrating time in her 0:02:58.880 --> 0:03:02.160 early twenties when she was trying and failing to get pregnant. 0:03:02.360 --> 0:03:05.280 It was ridiculous, and I was going back and forth 0:03:05.320 --> 0:03:07.640 to the emergency room and trying to figure out what 0:03:07.680 --> 0:03:09.519 was going on, and I just kept getting told that 0:03:09.560 --> 0:03:11.080 you're thyroid and lose weight. 0:03:11.680 --> 0:03:14.400 It all started because she was on an online message board. 0:03:15.919 --> 0:03:19.520 This is pre Facebook. It was called Chocolate Brides, but 0:03:19.560 --> 0:03:22.639 a lot of people Regina included hung around on the 0:03:22.680 --> 0:03:24.160 site even after they got married. 0:03:24.440 --> 0:03:29.280 They would have like home buying journals and then pregnancy journals, 0:03:29.680 --> 0:03:32.960 and then it would become a point where some people 0:03:33.040 --> 0:03:36.600 were like mentioning that they were having trouble getting pregnant 0:03:36.800 --> 0:03:39.280 and I was like, Oh, that's interesting. I didn't know 0:03:39.280 --> 0:03:41.880 black people dealt with that, or they'd mentioned going to 0:03:41.880 --> 0:03:43.640 a fertility center, and I was like, oh, they must 0:03:43.720 --> 0:03:46.160 have money. That's a thing that we don't do. 0:03:46.760 --> 0:03:49.720 Slowly, she started to connect the dots. 0:03:51.080 --> 0:03:52.800 Maybe those stories that I was hearing from, those are 0:03:52.800 --> 0:03:56.640 the ladies on chocolate brides, aren't just anomalies. Maybe those 0:03:56.640 --> 0:03:59.320 are like real things that are happening to everybody. And 0:03:59.360 --> 0:04:01.120 then I got mad because then I was like, well, 0:04:01.120 --> 0:04:03.680 nobody told me this, and nobody said this was a thing, 0:04:04.440 --> 0:04:09.040 and stereotypically, from what I see, it is presented to 0:04:09.080 --> 0:04:12.400 me as though Black women are hyper fertile and hyper 0:04:12.400 --> 0:04:15.520 sexualized and you need to just monitor your body and 0:04:15.520 --> 0:04:17.520 make sure you don't get pregnant. And I was like, 0:04:17.600 --> 0:04:19.640 but nobody told the whole story. 0:04:20.120 --> 0:04:22.600 In fact, a lot of studies have shown that black 0:04:22.640 --> 0:04:26.719 women have higher infertility rates than white women, much higher, 0:04:27.200 --> 0:04:30.719 but they're less likely to get help. Regina started a 0:04:30.720 --> 0:04:33.400 blog about her experience, the Broken Brown Egg. 0:04:33.880 --> 0:04:36.039 I just started writing things like, you know that aunt 0:04:36.080 --> 0:04:39.600 that never had kids, maybe she couldn't. And I got 0:04:39.600 --> 0:04:42.760 so many private messages from people that were like, oh 0:04:42.800 --> 0:04:45.279 my god, thank you for saying that, because I have 0:04:45.360 --> 0:04:46.680 been dealing with this for years. 0:04:47.480 --> 0:04:50.280 Figuring out the cause of her fertility troubles, though, was 0:04:50.320 --> 0:04:54.080 not straightforward. A doctor who read her blog suggested that 0:04:54.240 --> 0:04:57.400 based on her symptoms, she might have polycystic ovary syndrome 0:04:57.560 --> 0:05:01.120 or PCOS, which can affect fertility. The doctor who was 0:05:01.160 --> 0:05:04.560 treating her dismissed the idea outright. Then there was the 0:05:04.640 --> 0:05:06.239 issue of paying for all the treatment. 0:05:06.760 --> 0:05:09.359 It took ten years to get to our son because 0:05:09.360 --> 0:05:10.840 there was a lot of back and forth. There were 0:05:10.880 --> 0:05:13.200 times where I had insurance and my husband did it. 0:05:13.480 --> 0:05:15.800 There were times where I didn't have insurance. There were 0:05:15.839 --> 0:05:18.599 times where we were trying to figure out how to 0:05:18.640 --> 0:05:21.880 get the thyroid under control. And then also it's a 0:05:21.920 --> 0:05:24.160 lot of waiting game. It's a lot of Okay, we're 0:05:24.160 --> 0:05:26.200 gonna take this medication and then we'll see what happens 0:05:26.240 --> 0:05:28.719 in the next three months. We'll see what happens in 0:05:28.720 --> 0:05:31.080 the next six months, We'll see what. So your time 0:05:31.200 --> 0:05:32.279 is just moving along. 0:05:33.880 --> 0:05:36.880 After six or seven years of trying treatments that never worked, 0:05:37.240 --> 0:05:40.839 Regina found out that her fallopium tubes were blocked. The 0:05:41.040 --> 0:05:43.880 only way she was ever going to get pregnant would 0:05:43.880 --> 0:05:47.000 be IVF. She also found a good doctor who accepted 0:05:47.000 --> 0:05:47.680 her insurance. 0:05:48.240 --> 0:05:50.600 So many years of hurry up and wait, and then 0:05:50.600 --> 0:05:52.479 all of a sudden things just kind of took off, 0:05:53.160 --> 0:05:57.080 and so we did IVF in twenty fifteen, and our 0:05:57.120 --> 0:05:58.520 son was born in twenty sixteen. 0:05:58.920 --> 0:06:03.600 Regina got pregnant just one round of IVF. It's crazy 0:06:03.640 --> 0:06:06.760 to think about everything that she went through. For years. 0:06:06.800 --> 0:06:09.640 She was spending money and time and all these treatments 0:06:09.680 --> 0:06:12.839 that were never going to work, rearranging her life to 0:06:13.000 --> 0:06:15.039 shuttle back and forth to the doctor all the time, 0:06:15.200 --> 0:06:18.880 putting off other major life decisions. It was far too 0:06:18.960 --> 0:06:21.600 long of a journey, and one that's not at all 0:06:21.680 --> 0:06:27.039 uncommon for women of color, whose medical problems are often overlooked. Really, though, 0:06:27.160 --> 0:06:29.880 Regina's story highlights a lot of the different sorts of 0:06:29.920 --> 0:06:32.640 problems we have with fertility care here in the US. 0:06:33.480 --> 0:06:36.320 Given how often she was dismissed, it's kind of amazing 0:06:36.440 --> 0:06:39.760 she's stuck with it at all. Our fertility industry is 0:06:39.800 --> 0:06:43.120 mostly set up to serve people who are white, married, wealthy, 0:06:43.160 --> 0:06:46.560 and heterosexual. Everyone else gets left out in one way 0:06:46.640 --> 0:06:52.160 or another. In some cases, fertility policies exclude LGBTQ people 0:06:52.279 --> 0:06:55.200 by saying the benefits only apply to people who are infertile. 0:06:55.720 --> 0:06:58.800 There have been several discrimination lawsuits filed over this, one 0:06:58.839 --> 0:07:01.920 against ETNA settled in with the insurer agreeing to make 0:07:02.000 --> 0:07:05.400 artificial insemination a standard benefit and make it easier for 0:07:05.520 --> 0:07:09.160 LGBTQ people to do IVF. When asked about the suit, 0:07:09.279 --> 0:07:13.080 ATNA said it's committed to providing quality care to all individuals. 0:07:13.800 --> 0:07:17.360 Only four states in DC have mandates requiring some fertility 0:07:17.360 --> 0:07:22.360 insurance policies to include LGBTQ and single people. That's according 0:07:22.360 --> 0:07:27.360 to the civil rights organization GLAD. And yet in most places, 0:07:27.640 --> 0:07:29.880 whether you need to do IVF because your tubes are 0:07:29.920 --> 0:07:33.080 blocked or you're in a same sex couple, there is 0:07:33.440 --> 0:07:38.360 no coverage for IVF. Private health plans often deem fertility 0:07:38.400 --> 0:07:41.200 treatments not quote medically necessary. 0:07:41.560 --> 0:07:44.000 So many people tell me like that being in this 0:07:44.080 --> 0:07:47.320 journey change is how they navigate, you know, when they're 0:07:47.320 --> 0:07:49.000 applying for jobs and things like that. That I know 0:07:49.080 --> 0:07:51.640 so many people that like leave one job, that go 0:07:51.720 --> 0:07:54.320 work at Starbucks because Starbucks offers the coverage. 0:07:54.480 --> 0:07:56.600 It's hard to know exactly how many people don't have 0:07:56.680 --> 0:07:59.600 coverage because it varies so much depending on where you 0:07:59.640 --> 0:08:03.360 live in work, but it's a lot of people. Only 0:08:03.400 --> 0:08:06.679 about half of large employers offered fertility coverage in twenty 0:08:06.720 --> 0:08:10.960 twenty two, and without coverage, many people find themselves facing 0:08:11.040 --> 0:08:14.320 an impossible choice. Come up with tens of thousands of 0:08:14.360 --> 0:08:18.280 dollars or give up on the family of their dreams. 0:08:18.800 --> 0:08:19.640 We'll be right back. 0:08:24.120 --> 0:08:27.280 The economics of IVA for a little like Russian roulette, 0:08:27.840 --> 0:08:31.280 a high stakes game of chance. How much you're going 0:08:31.320 --> 0:08:33.880 to have to spend is pretty much impossible to pin down. 0:08:34.640 --> 0:08:37.680 There's the cost of office visits and hormone injections and 0:08:37.760 --> 0:08:41.439 drugs and egg retrievals. They're add on tests and procedures 0:08:41.480 --> 0:08:45.000 doctors often suggest. And then once you do it all once, 0:08:45.240 --> 0:08:49.360 you very well might have to do it again and again. 0:08:49.920 --> 0:08:52.000 And so we had to keep spending more and more money. 0:08:52.040 --> 0:08:53.559 Things got more and more expensive. 0:08:53.720 --> 0:08:55.440 I called it like the cults of Never Give Up. 0:08:55.520 --> 0:08:59.640 It was this very urgent laden kind of sales pitch. 0:08:59.720 --> 0:09:01.760 That's what it felt like to me. They kind of 0:09:01.800 --> 0:09:02.880 want to keep you coming back. 0:09:03.000 --> 0:09:04.400 Tens of thousands of dollars. 0:09:04.679 --> 0:09:07.760 There's the coll pays, then there's the medications that you're 0:09:07.760 --> 0:09:10.080 taking up to that. Then there's the gas. 0:09:10.200 --> 0:09:12.920 We're a couple of years in fifteen thousand in five 0:09:13.000 --> 0:09:13.839 value wise, in. 0:09:14.080 --> 0:09:16.440 We're talking about ten to fifteen thousand dollars here. 0:09:16.760 --> 0:09:21.319 People are making major economical decisions based on what's covered 0:09:21.840 --> 0:09:23.920 so that they can build a family. 0:09:26.160 --> 0:09:29.160 Even with good fertility coverage. I was wondering if I 0:09:29.200 --> 0:09:32.560 could afford to freeze. There were some things that weren't covered, 0:09:32.679 --> 0:09:35.040 and no one could give me a real estimate for 0:09:35.120 --> 0:09:38.360 what they might cost. Drugs alone could wind up costing 0:09:38.400 --> 0:09:41.720 a few thousand dollars. Regina told me she raised money 0:09:41.920 --> 0:09:45.000 for uncovered costs by hosting a paintent sip and selling 0:09:45.040 --> 0:09:48.679 T shirts and applying for grants. One industry expert had 0:09:48.720 --> 0:09:50.720 told me I should expect to pay for about a 0:09:50.800 --> 0:09:53.920 third of the total cost out of pocket, whatever that 0:09:54.040 --> 0:09:57.440 mystery number might be. Would that be two thousand dollars 0:09:57.520 --> 0:10:01.480 five thousand more? All I could do was guests. It 0:10:01.520 --> 0:10:04.680 was like applying to college without knowing the price of tuition. 0:10:05.440 --> 0:10:08.559 My own financial woes left me wondering how people without 0:10:08.600 --> 0:10:12.480 fertility benefits paid for all this, which, as I mentioned earlier, 0:10:12.679 --> 0:10:16.440 is the majority of people Katie, while wording, told me 0:10:16.480 --> 0:10:18.480 that she and her husband did all sorts of things 0:10:18.480 --> 0:10:20.319 to come up with the money for IVF. 0:10:20.360 --> 0:10:22.040 So our first thought was we'd go to the bank, 0:10:22.160 --> 0:10:24.360 but the loan percentage was a little more than what 0:10:24.400 --> 0:10:25.320 we were hoping for. 0:10:26.760 --> 0:10:29.640 When embryos got stuck in her fallopian tubes, she wound 0:10:29.679 --> 0:10:33.559 up losing both of them. Doing IVF wound up replacing 0:10:33.640 --> 0:10:36.920 other goals. They put off buying a house, they cut 0:10:36.960 --> 0:10:39.680 back on extras. Even then, they didn't have enough, so 0:10:39.800 --> 0:10:41.880 when the loan didn't work out, they borrowed money from 0:10:41.880 --> 0:10:46.439 their parents. Finally they had enough for one round. They 0:10:46.480 --> 0:10:48.400 live in Iowa and had to drive seven hours to 0:10:48.400 --> 0:10:48.920 their clinic. 0:10:49.320 --> 0:10:52.840 The first round, it was a little over twenty thousand dollars. 0:10:53.040 --> 0:10:55.360 Since we went so far, we had to pay for 0:10:55.400 --> 0:10:58.360 like hotel, stay what not for about two weeks for 0:10:58.440 --> 0:11:01.640 the egg retrieval, so that was about twenty thousand dollars. 0:11:01.880 --> 0:11:03.960 And with the first transfer, we still had to pay 0:11:03.960 --> 0:11:07.040 for our medications and that was about another five grand, 0:11:07.080 --> 0:11:10.520 which was so excessive. I don't think I've ever had 0:11:10.520 --> 0:11:13.960 to call my bank so many times to approve certain purchases. 0:11:14.240 --> 0:11:17.160 For Katie, though one embryo transfer didn't turn out to 0:11:17.160 --> 0:11:20.679 be enough. An embryo implanted in the tiny stump of 0:11:20.720 --> 0:11:23.880 a fallopian tube that she still had left it wasn't 0:11:23.880 --> 0:11:24.920 a viable pregnancy. 0:11:25.440 --> 0:11:28.160 So now we're just kind of on the road of 0:11:28.280 --> 0:11:31.959 doing another transfer after our last failed transfer. But now 0:11:31.960 --> 0:11:33.880 that we've come this far and it's already cost us 0:11:33.880 --> 0:11:36.479 this much, we've kind of reached out to other platforms. 0:11:36.520 --> 0:11:39.400 I guess Katie and her husband decided to try and 0:11:39.480 --> 0:11:43.440 raise money via the crowdfunding platform go fundme because fertility 0:11:43.480 --> 0:11:47.000 treatment is so expensive. Go fundme has a special IVF 0:11:47.000 --> 0:11:50.000 fundraising page that people like Katie and her husband can 0:11:50.120 --> 0:11:53.080 use to seek help from loved ones and even strangers, 0:11:53.400 --> 0:11:56.120 but after several months, they had only raised just over 0:11:56.160 --> 0:11:59.240 two thousand dollars of the more than twenty thousand they 0:11:59.280 --> 0:11:59.839 would need. 0:12:00.240 --> 0:12:03.240 I'm not very good with technology, but my nieces are 0:12:03.280 --> 0:12:05.720 trying to help me go on TikTok and put something 0:12:05.760 --> 0:12:09.120 on there, so that'll be our next thing to try 0:12:09.120 --> 0:12:12.560 to get people to hopefully, you know, reach out and 0:12:13.240 --> 0:12:16.000 help us. My niece has thought where if twenty thousand 0:12:16.000 --> 0:12:18.440 people could give you a dollar, you'd be golden. So 0:12:18.920 --> 0:12:19.800 that's our hope. 0:12:20.280 --> 0:12:22.600 I found a lot of people like Katie on GoFundMe. 0:12:23.360 --> 0:12:26.080 It does hundreds of couples trying to raise money right 0:12:26.280 --> 0:12:29.200 now to have a baby. The company told me that 0:12:29.280 --> 0:12:32.480 nearly ten thousand fertility fundraisers have launched on the site 0:12:32.520 --> 0:12:36.880 since twenty ten, raising more than six point eight million dollars. 0:12:37.360 --> 0:12:39.960 People have to get strategic to figure out how to 0:12:39.960 --> 0:12:43.840 pay for IVF, but I only met one couple who 0:12:43.920 --> 0:12:46.480 actually managed to raise most of the money they needed 0:12:46.480 --> 0:12:51.560 by fundraising. Shae and Tanner write to start a family. 0:12:51.600 --> 0:12:54.800 They were forced to do IVF because Tanner has terminal cancer. 0:12:55.400 --> 0:12:57.199 I talked to Shane Tanner over zoom. 0:12:57.520 --> 0:13:02.200 So Tanner is my husband here. He was diagnosed with 0:13:02.360 --> 0:13:07.440 stage four colon cancer at age twenty five. Tanner really 0:13:07.480 --> 0:13:09.679 wants to be a dad, and I wanted to experience 0:13:09.720 --> 0:13:10.320 that with him. 0:13:10.760 --> 0:13:12.880 I'm talking to both of them, but Shae does most 0:13:12.920 --> 0:13:16.440 of the talking. You can tell Tanner is tired. He's 0:13:16.480 --> 0:13:19.720 reclining against a wall. Tanner for a sperm after he 0:13:19.800 --> 0:13:22.559 was diagnosed. Since treatments like chemo can affect your fertility, 0:13:23.160 --> 0:13:25.680 they only had one sample of tanner sperm, so doctors 0:13:25.720 --> 0:13:29.760 recommended IVF, but their insurance didn't cover anything. Shay was 0:13:29.800 --> 0:13:32.559 already working multiple jobs while also getting a degree in 0:13:32.600 --> 0:13:35.440 marriage and family therapy in her spare time. She came 0:13:35.520 --> 0:13:37.800 up with a creative idea for how to raise the money. 0:13:38.160 --> 0:13:44.440 So we did an IVF auction. We contacted businesses that 0:13:44.559 --> 0:13:47.920 were based in Utah and we just asked if they 0:13:47.920 --> 0:13:51.040 are basically like donating either items or services to her auction. 0:13:51.720 --> 0:13:55.120 So we had a puppy we had like a trip 0:13:55.160 --> 0:13:58.199 to Alaska. Someone donated like a cabin for a week 0:13:58.280 --> 0:14:02.480 in Alaska, and then we held the auction on my 0:14:02.640 --> 0:14:05.839 personal Instagram. That took like seven hours to list them 0:14:05.840 --> 0:14:08.319 all and then for a week the auction was open 0:14:08.400 --> 0:14:11.920 and people were just bidding on the items throughout the week. 0:14:13.280 --> 0:14:15.360 They raised most of the money they needed that way, 0:14:15.840 --> 0:14:19.480 twenty two thousand dollars. They also set up a gofundmeme 0:14:19.560 --> 0:14:21.840 after some people reached out wanting to donate instead of 0:14:21.840 --> 0:14:25.280 making a purchase. Through that, they raised another twelve thousand. 0:14:26.000 --> 0:14:28.800 So it wasn't relieve and I was just shocked at 0:14:29.200 --> 0:14:31.120 all of the generosity of people. 0:14:32.680 --> 0:14:34.840 Shay was able to use social media to raise a 0:14:34.880 --> 0:14:37.680 ton of money and put IVF within reach for her 0:14:37.720 --> 0:14:40.440 and Tanner, but even that might not wind up being 0:14:40.520 --> 0:14:44.200 enough money if, like Katie, they end up needing multiple 0:14:44.280 --> 0:14:48.040 rounds of IVF. Should building a family really be dictated 0:14:48.120 --> 0:14:51.800 by how much money you have? We'll be right back. 0:14:58.520 --> 0:15:01.200 As I got deeper into the process freezing, I was 0:15:01.200 --> 0:15:05.200 starting to realize how insane this whole system seemed. It 0:15:05.240 --> 0:15:07.480 wasn't just the cost and the odds of it not working. 0:15:08.360 --> 0:15:10.920 For example, one of the reasons it's not only expensive 0:15:10.960 --> 0:15:13.720 to get fertility treatment but also hard to get an appointment. 0:15:13.880 --> 0:15:17.080 So there just aren't enough fertility doctors. And that's because 0:15:17.120 --> 0:15:20.840 the number of federally funded fellowships and reproductive endochronology is 0:15:20.960 --> 0:15:23.920 capped each year. Several people told me that there are 0:15:23.960 --> 0:15:27.120 not enough doctors and there aren't enough being trained to 0:15:27.160 --> 0:15:30.720 catch up with the growing demand. I started wondering if 0:15:30.720 --> 0:15:34.160 anyone was approaching things differently, if there was another way 0:15:34.200 --> 0:15:36.920 to do fertility care that might make it more accessible 0:15:36.920 --> 0:15:37.360 to people. 0:15:37.960 --> 0:15:40.640 Please remain seated with your seatbelt securely. 0:15:40.240 --> 0:15:43.840 Fascinating, which brought me to Oklahoma City and to a 0:15:43.880 --> 0:15:46.000 fertility startup called Mate. 0:15:46.160 --> 0:15:47.160 Are you far away from Home? 0:15:47.560 --> 0:15:47.840 Yeah? 0:15:47.840 --> 0:15:49.760 But you know so One of the things I've been 0:15:49.800 --> 0:15:53.640 doing is exploring different options. I'm doing egg freezing, and 0:15:54.440 --> 0:15:57.280 it's so much less expensive here than when I got 0:15:57.360 --> 0:15:59.320 quoted in New York. It's literally half the price. 0:15:59.480 --> 0:16:00.400 A lot of people do that. 0:16:00.440 --> 0:16:03.440 We have people from Washington, Kansas who come here. 0:16:03.680 --> 0:16:05.760 It comes here really because we're cheaper. 0:16:05.960 --> 0:16:09.920 Wow. Maye is focused on three related problems, the cost 0:16:09.920 --> 0:16:13.320 of IVF, the shortage of IVF doctors, and access to 0:16:13.360 --> 0:16:17.160 IVF outside of wealthy, big cities, and its solution to 0:16:17.160 --> 0:16:21.680 those problems. It's sort of radical. It's ruffled a few feathers. 0:16:22.240 --> 0:16:26.600 Instead of hiring fertility doctors, partners with obgyns and trains 0:16:26.640 --> 0:16:30.560 them how to do fertility care. I was intrigued. At 0:16:30.560 --> 0:16:33.920 Maine's Oklahoma location, a freezing cycle was fifty four hundred 0:16:33.920 --> 0:16:38.000 dollars inclusive of everything. That's a lot cheaper than the 0:16:38.080 --> 0:16:41.840 ten thousand I was quoted in New York. My appointment 0:16:42.000 --> 0:16:44.160 started with a nurse taking my vitals. 0:16:45.040 --> 0:16:46.600 I'm going to have you uncrusha way. 0:16:50.480 --> 0:16:51.560 Yeah five. 0:16:52.600 --> 0:16:56.240 Then I saw doctor, I'm just gonna go over your 0:16:56.480 --> 0:16:58.720 history first and then we'll start from there. Okay, okay, 0:16:58.760 --> 0:17:01.000 that sounds good, all right? He told me a little 0:17:01.000 --> 0:17:04.400 bit about what I might expect at my age age. 0:17:04.520 --> 0:17:07.120 I'm going to show you a little graph here. 0:17:09.200 --> 0:17:11.800 Thirty seven years of age, your chances of having a 0:17:11.800 --> 0:17:13.800 abnormal embryo is about forty percent. 0:17:14.440 --> 0:17:17.359 That number drived with other datea I had seen. I 0:17:17.400 --> 0:17:19.719 definitely didn't feel like I was getting the candy coated 0:17:19.800 --> 0:17:22.879 version of things. When I was there, the Oklahoma office 0:17:22.920 --> 0:17:26.320 was in the midst of a major expansion. Oklahoma City 0:17:26.320 --> 0:17:28.879 has just one other fertility clinic, so there's a lot 0:17:28.920 --> 0:17:32.000 of potential demand on top of the patient's mates getting 0:17:32.000 --> 0:17:34.800 from all over the country. For the big picture, I 0:17:34.800 --> 0:17:37.960 caught up with Mate CEO Tracy Keene. She told me 0:17:38.000 --> 0:17:39.760 that the company is trying to figure out how to 0:17:39.760 --> 0:17:42.840 meet demand that the industry just can't currently serve. 0:17:43.200 --> 0:17:46.280 The industry was built as a niche for high net 0:17:46.280 --> 0:17:49.600 worth individuals. This industry wasn't built to accommodate the fact 0:17:49.600 --> 0:17:52.840 that roughly thirty percent of the population probably needs some 0:17:52.920 --> 0:17:55.080 form of intervention at this juncture. 0:17:55.440 --> 0:18:00.080 This system is backed up. I experienced this firsthand. One 0:18:00.160 --> 0:18:02.520 budget fertility chain I looked into had a two month 0:18:02.560 --> 0:18:06.600 wait for just an initial phone consultation. Actually signed up 0:18:06.600 --> 0:18:10.000 for a consultation and paid a deposit and they never 0:18:10.160 --> 0:18:11.359 called me Mate. 0:18:11.400 --> 0:18:13.960 It's focusing on the supply side of the issues. When 0:18:14.000 --> 0:18:16.840 I say supply side, I mean fundamentally, there aren't enough 0:18:16.840 --> 0:18:20.040 providers and there aren't enough clinics to meet the demand. 0:18:20.359 --> 0:18:23.919 There were two point seven million cycles that didn't occur 0:18:24.800 --> 0:18:28.040 that needed to in twenty twenty one. There are more 0:18:28.080 --> 0:18:32.159 reproductive andnochronologists retiring than are graduating from the Fellowship on 0:18:32.160 --> 0:18:36.040 an annual basis. And so the model was really built 0:18:36.080 --> 0:18:38.240 in this way to say, Okay, how do we enable 0:18:38.320 --> 0:18:40.560 everyone to practice at the top of their license. 0:18:41.000 --> 0:18:44.680 Tracy told me that by hiring obgins to do fertility care, 0:18:45.119 --> 0:18:47.720 they were able to not only drop prices, but open 0:18:47.760 --> 0:18:50.879 in cities where there are fewer options, like Oklahoma City 0:18:51.000 --> 0:18:52.119 and Waco, Texas. 0:18:52.480 --> 0:18:53.639 Mate's model. 0:18:53.840 --> 0:18:57.639 We're not doing high volume centers. We're partnering with individual 0:18:57.680 --> 0:19:00.520 practices to build a practice that will do, you know, 0:19:00.560 --> 0:19:03.399 five hundred cycles a year. So when people want to 0:19:03.440 --> 0:19:06.600 talk about, you know, what's your competition, I'm like, the 0:19:06.640 --> 0:19:09.399 sky is the limit here. We could build thousands of 0:19:09.440 --> 0:19:11.600 these and there would still be more people who need 0:19:11.640 --> 0:19:12.440 access to care. 0:19:12.880 --> 0:19:15.120 I talked to several patients who said they were only 0:19:15.160 --> 0:19:18.679 able to afford treatment they needed at ME. One patient 0:19:18.720 --> 0:19:21.400 even drove to Oklahoma City from Texas to do IVF 0:19:22.040 --> 0:19:24.720 meet has attracted a fair amount of criticism, though. When 0:19:24.760 --> 0:19:28.159 I asked the professional group that oversees fertility doctors about METE, 0:19:28.280 --> 0:19:30.520 they told me they were concerned that patients wouldn't be 0:19:30.520 --> 0:19:33.320 getting the level of care and expertise they needed from 0:19:33.359 --> 0:19:36.240 an obgun that had limited fertility training. 0:19:36.720 --> 0:19:38.520 It's like a lot of kinds of medicine. 0:19:38.560 --> 0:19:40.399 There's a lot of stuff your internists can do for you, 0:19:41.359 --> 0:19:43.359 there's a lot of stuff they can't, or that a 0:19:43.400 --> 0:19:44.560 specialist would do better. 0:19:45.320 --> 0:19:46.680 So I don't think we have. 0:19:48.280 --> 0:19:51.400 Dat yet that says, okay, which steps are really appropriate 0:19:51.480 --> 0:19:53.640 for somebody who's in OBJN. 0:19:54.000 --> 0:19:56.919 That's Sean Tipton, the head of advocacy and policy for 0:19:56.960 --> 0:20:00.600 that fertility doctor's group. One day he said roles like 0:20:00.680 --> 0:20:03.680 nurse practitioners might be able to help satisfy that demand. 0:20:04.320 --> 0:20:07.119 Typically those jobs still work under the supervision of an 0:20:07.119 --> 0:20:07.879 expert doctor. 0:20:08.359 --> 0:20:10.240 I don't think we know yet what the right answers 0:20:10.240 --> 0:20:10.840 are going to be. 0:20:11.400 --> 0:20:14.280 Tracy finds this argument a bit old fashioned, though. 0:20:14.280 --> 0:20:17.679 We have babies being born, we have good clinical pregnancy rates. 0:20:17.800 --> 0:20:22.679 As we expand to new markets geographically throughout the United States, 0:20:22.720 --> 0:20:24.960 I think we're going to get a much different picture 0:20:25.200 --> 0:20:27.960 of what infertility really looks like in this country. 0:20:28.520 --> 0:20:31.440 For example, Tracy said, the average age of an IVF 0:20:31.480 --> 0:20:34.320 patient at MAATE is a lot lower than the national average, 0:20:34.520 --> 0:20:35.840 which is thirty six point three. 0:20:36.240 --> 0:20:38.840 Our average patient age in Oklahoma City is thirty and 0:20:38.880 --> 0:20:42.439 a half. That's very different. There's a lot that we 0:20:42.520 --> 0:20:43.000 don't know. 0:20:44.800 --> 0:20:47.399 It's actually hard to say whether infertility is really on 0:20:47.440 --> 0:20:50.160 the rise or if there's just some combination of more 0:20:50.200 --> 0:20:53.760 awareness of infertility and people starting families later in life. 0:20:54.200 --> 0:20:56.680 What's for certain is that the number of people seeking 0:20:56.720 --> 0:21:01.400