The wait to see the doctor at Japan’s popular fertility clinic Saint Mother Hospital just got longer.
Starting yesterday, public health insurance will reimburse 70 percent of the costs of advanced fertility treatments as part of the government’s attempt to halt a decline in one of the world’s fastest-aging populations.
Atsushi Tanaka, doctor and director of Saint Mother in Kita Kyushu, southern Japan, expects more patients at his clinic, already packed with couples seeking treatments such as in-vitro fertilization (IVF) which previously cost over 500,000 yen (US$4,090) per cycle — more than the average household’s monthly income.
Photo: EPA-EFE
“I think we’ll see a huge number of patients,” he said, adding that nationwide IVF attempts may even double.
Yet Tanaka and other specialists say this won’t be enough to reverse Japan’s demographic decline, with patients still facing considerable costs, and insurance coverage excluding procedures such as genetic screening and the use of donor eggs. With the number of women of child-bearing age dropping off in the coming years, they said, the government needs to do more.
Japan’s experience will serve as a test case for advanced economies facing declining birth rates. While free, or mostly free, IVF treatments are already available in a handful of countries including Denmark and France, Japan is the biggest economy to subsidize most costs for such treatments.
It already has one of the world’s biggest number of women trying IVF. One in 14, or about 7 percent of babies, were conceived through IVF in 2019, compared with 2 percent in the US. Yet its birthrate still hovers around 1.3, far below the 2.1 rate the OECD says is needed to sustain a stable population.
The move is the latest attempt to encourage younger people to have babies. Over the past decade, it has expanded financial subsidies for daycare and monthly allowances to families with children. Japan’s childcare leave policies are already among the most generous in the world, although few fathers take full advantage of what’s offered, due to social and work pressure.
The government had already offered some financial assistance to lower-income couples seeking fertility treatment, but the latest change aims to provide access for a broader population seeking IVF, including methods such as injecting sperm into the uterus during ovulation and the use of frozen embryos.
COST CONCERNS
Policymakers hope the insurance coverage will encourage couples, who are grappling with years of low wages amid a weak economy, to try treatment sooner.
“It’s good that it will lower the bar for people in their early 30’s who need IVF treatment but were waiting for their bonus payments,” said Yuko Imamura at Health and Global Policy Institute, a Tokyo-based independent think-tank focusing on health policy.
Yet for Yuki Yano and her husband, who have been trying to conceive for a few years, treatments such as IVF are still too expensive. Even with insurance coverage, they may need to pay around 150,000 yen per cycle.
“The two of us are barely making ends meet as it is, and we don’t have the money to pay hundreds of thousands of yen for IVF,” said the 31-year-old.
For now, she is sticking to Clomid, a drug which helps stimulate ovulation. Since suffering an ectopic pregnancy that required the removal of one fallopian tube, she has found treatment stressful, particularly when her husband — a long-distance truck driver — is away during peak fertility days. “It’s hard, to be honest. And I just get older in the meantime.”
To pay for the new coverage, the government has set aside 17.4 billion yen in the budget for the fiscal year that began on yesterday. Analysts say it’s hard to say whether the spending will pay off. South Korea’s birthrate continues to decline despite expanded public insurance coverage of fertility treatments, although some studies on countries such as Denmark are more encouraging.
Saint Mother’s Tanaka said the government should consider helping to pay for egg freezing, a costly treatment not covered by public insurance. Companies like Google have offered female employees the chance to freeze their eggs, giving them greater freedom to pursue careers and family planning.
“The government is telling women to work. But they’re also telling women to have children sooner, and isn’t that contradictory? This is a solution,” he said. He also supports insurance coverage of methods such as time-lapse monitoring or preimplantation genetic testing, technologies credited for higher success rates.
But many women say it’s not just about medical treatment. A recent study by Sumitomo Life Insurance Co. found that a majority of Japanese women thought it was impossible to pursue both fertility treatment and work.
Megumi Takai, 33, plans to leave her full-time office job soon, and work part time to focus more on fertility treatment. She said many women were unable to use time off for doctor appointments, feeling it was too sensitive a subject to bring up at work.
“I wish society were more supportive about this, and that everyone could take time off when needed,” she said.
A vaccine to fight dementia? It turns out there may already be one — shots that prevent painful shingles also appear to protect aging brains. A new study found shingles vaccination cut older adults’ risk of developing dementia over the next seven years by 20 percent. The research, published Wednesday in the journal Nature, is part of growing understanding about how many factors influence brain health as we age — and what we can do about it. “It’s a very robust finding,” said lead researcher Pascal Geldsetzer of Stanford University. And “women seem to benefit more,” important as they’re at higher risk of
Last week the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) said that the budget cuts voted for by the China-aligned parties in the legislature, are intended to force the DPP to hike electricity rates. The public would then blame it for the rate hike. It’s fairly clear that the first part of that is correct. Slashing the budget of state-run Taiwan Power Co (Taipower, 台電) is a move intended to cause discontent with the DPP when electricity rates go up. Taipower’s debt, NT$422.9 billion (US$12.78 billion), is one of the numerous permanent crises created by the nation’s construction-industrial state and the developmentalist mentality it
Eric Finkelstein is a world record junkie. The American’s Guinness World Records include the largest flag mosaic made from table tennis balls, the longest table tennis serve and eating at the most Michelin-starred restaurants in 24 hours in New York. Many would probably share the opinion of Finkelstein’s sister when talking about his records: “You’re a lunatic.” But that’s not stopping him from his next big feat, and this time he is teaming up with his wife, Taiwanese native Jackie Cheng (鄭佳祺): visit and purchase a
Experts say that the devastating earthquake in Myanmar on Friday was likely the strongest to hit the country in decades, with disaster modeling suggesting thousands could be dead. Automatic assessments from the US Geological Survey (USGS) said the shallow 7.7-magnitude quake northwest of the central Myanmar city of Sagaing triggered a red alert for shaking-related fatalities and economic losses. “High casualties and extensive damage are probable and the disaster is likely widespread,” it said, locating the epicentre near the central Myanmar city of Mandalay, home to more than a million people. Myanmar’s ruling junta said on Saturday morning that the number killed had
RSS