Health insurance companies do not pay for sperm bank

Cryopreservation: Health insurance companies do not pay for sperm bank
For a long time the health insurance companies have been willing to pay to freeze female ova for artificial insemination. However, men are not entitled to such a payment for the preservation of their sperm, even if they are threatened with infertility due to a disease.

Incapable of generation through chemotherapy and radiation therapy
A 42-year-old man from the Koblenz area, diagnosed with carcinoma of the rectum, had received his doctor's advice and had his sperm cryopreserved because of the ability to be produced by chemo and radiation therapy. Cryopreservation is understood to mean the storage of cells by freezing in liquid nitrogen. The method makes it possible to maintain the vitality of the cells almost indefinitely and puts the biological system in the state of aggregation of a solid. Subsequently, the cells can be thawed again at any time and resume normal physiological processes. However, the storage of the cells in so-called cryobanks is correspondingly expensive.

Plaintiff has no claim to reimbursement
The cost of for storage in the sperm bank wanted the health insurance of the plaintiff, the Barmer GEK, therefore not take over and so the man up to the Federal Social Court (BSG) in Kassel. After the previous courts had already rejected the insured's request, the competent judges at the SPA were now also of the opinion that the freezing and storage of the sperm cells was basically the sole responsibility of the patients (ref .: B 1 KR 26/09 R). The costs of 687.25 euros alone for the first twelve months of storage, the plaintiff now has to raise itself.

Women and men - unequal treatment in case of impending inability to produce
The plaintiff's lawyer sees this as a significant unequal treatment of male and female insured persons, stressing: „His bad luck is that he has to store his genetic material outside the body“. In women who are taken from ovarian tissue before a cancer therapy and frozen to later by reimplantation to restore fertility, the health insurance must pay. So the BSG had decided only at the beginning of the year (Az .: B 1 KR 10/09 R). The judges judge the situation of the men differently than with the women, justify them with the fact that statutory health insurance only for a concrete artificial insemination as well as for a treatments, which allows a natural fertilization, have to pay. In the present case of the precautionary course to the sperm bank, however, both are not given, so the verdict of the senate. (fp, 28.09.2010)

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Picture credits: Michael Grabscheit