University of Michigan’s “IVF benefits” are A LIE
If you are considering taking a pay cut or accepting a lower-paying role at the University of Michigan specifically for their advertised fertility/IVF health benefits, please read this first.
The benefit is structured as a financial illusion.
Here is exactly how the system works to trap employees:
U-M provides an infertility benefit with a $20,000 lifetime cap. However, the medical plan forces you to use their own internal health system—Michigan Medicine (Center for Reproductive Medicine)—or they pay zero.
Because you are trapped in their network, Michigan Medicine bills your internal U-M insurance at massively inflated institutional rates. A single basic IVF cycle can easily clear $30,000 in insurance billing, completely exhausting your lifetime $20,000 maximum before you even reach a single embryo transfer.
U-M's official policy explicitly mandates a pharmacy rider covering 5 lifetime medication fills. However, their third-party administrator (Prime Therapeutics) routinely issues automated verbal denials over the phone, falsely stating fertility medications are excluded. While this can eventually be bypassed via a specific prior authorization hurdle, frontline reps completely misinform patients, threatening an extra $5,000–$8,000 out-of-pocket per cycle.
We were completely priced out of our own employer's medical network. We were forced to bypass our "benefits" entirely and seek care out-of-state at CNY Fertility, paying entirely out-of-pocket because cash-pay pricing at an independent clinic is significantly cheaper than trying to navigate U-M's predatory internal insurance network.
Do not let U-M use "competitive IVF care" as a recruitment tool to justify low wages. If you need fertility care, you will not fine it here.