Being Misinformed!

I am seriously going to rant and rant some more. You might want to skip this post today. 


Al and I decided since we spent so much money on fertility treatments last year that we would deduct our medical this year. Once we learned that it had to total over 7% of your total income then we knew for sure we had enough. I started going through all of our receipts from 2012. As you all know we bought the Attain Multi-Cycle Program that consisted of (2) fresh cycles and (2) frozen cycles for X amount of dollars. I read through and through our contract and so much of it was foreign to me. We talked to our clinic and the basically told us what wasn't covered:

Medications
Anesthesia
Freezing of embyros
Storage of frozen embryos

Great good deal huh! So today I call my RE clinic to find out how much copays we made in 2012 so I could add to our medical expenses. She faxes me over a 28 page print off and at the end it says we owe $2,200. WTF? I know that we did owe a few hundred but $2,200? I start looking through the invoice and here are a few charges:

$773.35 for " Extended culture of oocyte/embryo 4-7 days

$1,000 for " Extended culture of oocyte/embryo 4-7 days

$400.00 "Assisted hatching embryos

So I look in my contract with Attain totally confused and there it is

Covered services

* Embryo culture (up to 3 days)

I do understand that you should know what you are signing when spending that much money. But, we didn't even know going into this that embryo culture was something we needed to know about!



I talked to the girl at my RE office and explained to her I feel like we were taken for fools and was very upset. I was told by my RE on day 3 that none of our remaining would make it to blast stage let alone frozen so why did I get charged for 4-7 cultures????  She was absolutely sympatheic and said she would get those two huge charges reversed. 


This story ends well, but what about all of us going into this and not knowing. My program also covered (2) FET. Thank god we didn't have any because it doesn't cover the culture after three days to decide if they can freeze and it doesn't cover freezing them or storage.


I am just really upset that Attain or our clinic didn't take the time to truly explain this process to us. We were wet behind the ears going into this. Never knew what questions to ask. 


Moral to the story..... Read between the lines and ask ALOT of questions! It would have been cheaper for us to go through our clinic and have ivf done twice.

UPDATE:

Within 45 minutes after conversation with my clinic I received an email stating the charges were immediately taken off and I know owe $345. Sigh of relief!