Health insurers may also have to reimburse artificial insemination for women of advanced age. This emerges from a judgment of the Federal Court of Justice (BGH). A statistically higher risk of miscarriage is not a reason to refuse to pay the costs.
In the specific case from Bremen, it was about the treatment of a 44-year-old whose husband could not naturally produce children. His private health insurance hadn't wanted to cover the costs of around 17,500 euros, mainly due to the age of the woman. Miscarriages were more common in this age group.
The Karlsruhe judges classified the four attempts at artificial insemination as medically necessary treatment. The only decisive factor was that the treatment could lead to pregnancy with a certain probability. How this goes on has no role to play.
The couple's right to self-determination "includes, in principle, the decision to fulfill the desire to have children at an advanced age while accepting age-specific risks," the judgment says. The only other way to make a decision would be if the health of the parents made it unlikely that the child would be born alive.
In the case of the couple in the case, the BGH saw no evidence of this. The insurance company must therefore bear the costs except for an excess of the insured person.
(Az. IV ZR 323/18)