[poppyfairy]

Originally Posted by Megan

Sorry fishukie, I didn't see your post earlier. I'm not sure of the cost of GIFT.

I don't have private health cover either and am about to start my first cycle of IVF in 2 weeks. Up front we have to pay $2500 and then we will also have the hospital and anaesthetist expenses on top of that. We're expecting it to reach around $3500 all up.
We have also registered for the Medicare safety net so I'm not sure what that means for how much we will get back??

Hi thanks for your reply!!! I am so glad to hear of someone else doing all this without private health cover. We just felt that by the time we had paid a year of premiums then we would have paid for most of the expenses anyway! I had been unsure of the whole Medicare Safety Net stuff and was quite dismayed to hear recently that anything you have done in a hospital is not included! So even though the costs altogether for my laparoscopy (including anaethetists fees etc) came to about $1800 our total contribution to the safety net adds up to only $118!! My jaw dropped when the medicare lady told me that! We got about $600 - 700 back though from medicare when we made our claim so we are losing but not so much!
That does sound good though $3500 for full IVF. I guess that GIFT would be slightly cheaper??