Lifeboat Foundation

For prospective parents who are carriers of many inherited diseases, using in vitro fertilization along with genetic testing would significantly lower health care expenditures, according to researchers at Stanford Medicine.

Preimplantation genetic diagnostic testing during IVF, or PGD-IVF, is being used to screen for single-gene defect conditions such as cystic fibrosis, sickle cell disease and Tay-Sachs disease, along with nearly 400 others.

The problem is that the high cost of IVF — and the lack of coverage by all but one state Medicaid program, that of New York — makes it unavailable to millions of people at risk. The majority of private employer health benefit plans also do not cover IVF.