U.K. TO REVERSE COURSE ON IVF?

The present policy discourages it on pennypinching grounds -- but now they are beginning to realize that they need all the babies they can get!

Making fertility treatment freely available to all would boost Britain's population and help stave off the looming pensions crisis, scientists said yesterday. Using the latest figures on the costs of fertility treatment, researchers calculated the total value of an IVF baby to the British economy and compared it with a baby conceived naturally. They found that if the government invested in IVF and offered three cycles of fertility treatment on the NHS, the country would increase its population by 10,000 within two to three years. Currently only a quarter of IVF treatment is conducted by the NHS. Their calculations showed that once the extra cost is taken into account, every person born through IVF would on average contribute 147,138 pounds to the economy, compared with 160,069 pounds generated over the lifetime of a person conceived naturally.

"If a government invests in IVF treatment, essentially by paying for that treatment, and a baby results, the government starts earning money back two years later than if the baby was conceived naturally," said Professor Bill Ledger, head of reproductive medicine at Sheffield University.

The calculations are the first attempt to assess the value of children born through IVF to the British economy. The researchers worked on the basis of the child living to the average male age of 78, and the cost of IVF being 12,931 pounds per conceived live birth. In 2004, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, which governs what medical treatments are available on the NHS, recommended that couples should be offered three cycles of IVF on the NHS, but many primary healthcare trusts are unable to afford the cost.

Prof Ledger said he wanted to see universal NHS funding of three IVF cycles, instead of the current "postcode lottery" system which resulted in an average of less than one cycle being state-supported. Speaking at the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology yesterday, Prof Ledger said that providing three cycles of IVF to all couples would cost the government an extra 50-80 milion pounds, but the cost would quickly be recovered by taxes made from the boosted population.

In a separate study, Jonathan Grant, director of the Cambridge-based thinktank, found that more government funding of IVF would help improve Britain's low birth rate, which although at a 13-year high of 1.8 births per woman, is still below the 2.1 figure needed to maintain the population size. Without new policies to increase fertility rates, Britain and other countries in Europe will face ageing societies that cannot be supported because the workforce is too small. Predictions suggest that by 2050, a third of Europeans will be older than 65. "If three cycles of IVF were available on the NHS, we think we could put another 10,000 births into society from couples who are otherwise not going to have children," said Prof Ledger. "All we would like to see is three full cycles of IVF for all women who are eligible."

Other countries have already moved to bolster their populations by funding more IVF. In Denmark, 3% of children are born through IVF, compared with just 1% in Britain. In South Korea, where the fertility rate is 1.08, one of the lowest in the world, the government has pledged $38bn over five years to encourage couples to have babies. "If Gordon Brown is concerned about where his pension fund is going to be coming from, then it's clear that IVF can contribute to the economy significantly. It's really a win-win situation," said Dr Mark Hamilton, chairman of the British Fertility Society. "This isn't fertility clinics trying to drum up business. There are those who want babies through IVF but they can't afford it."

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL hospitals and health insurance schemes should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the very poor and minimal regulation. Both Australia and Sweden have large private sector health systems with government reimbursement for privately-provided services so can a purely private system with some level of government reimbursement or insurance for the poor be so hard to do?

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