Healthcare Limitations
A complex topic at best, since there are multiple
facets to the limitations to currently available healthcare.
1. Limits of understanding. Science can identify
and quantify a great deal of the process of the creation
of life, but it cannot understand all of it. Both causative
factors for infertility and miscarriage, and solutions
to the problems they cause, are not fully understood.
2. Individual Doctors. Some doctors are better at
listening, better at diagnostic analysis, and more experienced
in what is most likely to be a problem in a given situation.
Some doctors are, unfortunately, too arrogant to really
listen well, and will place statistics over individuality
in making conclusions about what to try next.
3. Health Insurance. Most health insurance will not cover
infertility treatments. It will cover diagnostics and
treatment for repeat miscarriage ONLY after you have
verification of two or three miscarriages in a row.
If you are experiencing repeat early miscarriage, you
may never be able to get proof that it is not just infertility.
4. Process of Elimination. Health insurance companies
have required that doctors always eliminate common or
inexpensive things before testing for less common or
more expensive aspects. This means that doctors are
conditioned to a certain diagnostic procedure, which,
while it often makes sense, is not always the wisest
course of action. This process means that you'll have
to rule out - and PAY for - all the common stuff before
you can get to the point of learning anything useful
if you have a problem that is less common.
5. Malpractice Lawsuits. Doctors also recommend things
at times that are not the best option for the patient
in question, but which they HAVE to recommend in order
to avoid being sued if something goes wrong. Malpractice
suits also inflate the cost of medical care.
6. Diagnosis, but no solution. It may be clear after
testing that a man has a low sperm count, or low motility,
or that a woman is not ovulating, and is not able to
be treated with common ovulation stimulation medications,
but knowing that, and correcting it, are two different
things. Once the diagnostic process is done, you may
or may not have a reason for what is happening. And
even when you have the reason, you may have a lot more
expense to find a solution. In many cases, there may
BE no clear solution. Sometimes the solution is outside
the experience or understanding of the doctor - in certain
cases, an herbal remedy may actually be the right treatment,
but a doctor would never even consider recommending
it, even if he had nothing else to offer.
This is not just a "pick on the doctors"
page. It is just meant to outline what some of the limits
to healthcare are where infertility treatment is concerned
- and there are many! There really is no easy solution
to many of the problems, and certainly choosing to go
it alone presents its own set of problems. But when
the heathcare route becomes impossible, you may have
no alternative but to accept the challenges and problems
inherent in trying to find your own solution.
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