Katie Beall was diagnosed with breast cancer on March 1, 2022. Two days later, doctors told her the chemotherapy she needed would make her infertile. The next day, she started looking into how she could freeze her eggs, which would give her the option of becoming a mother in the future.
Twenty-three days after her cancer diagnosis, the 36-year-old Helena resident said, she had charged $7,579 on three credit cards to pay for her out-of-pocket fertility preservation costs.
Her insurance didn’t cover it. In Montana, fertility preservation for newly diagnosed cancer patients whose pending treatment could cause infertility isn’t required to be covered by insurance.
On March 15, 2023, Beall finished her chemotherapy and began to lobby Montana’s Legislature to change that.
