Notes on Cord Blood Banking

Enrolling with CBR

2010-11-18T21:30:00.000-08:00

We signed up with CBR when our baby was born, and are clients of CBR. So, we are able to offer a special price meant for family & friends of CBR clients. If you need any additional information about the savings, do feel free to leave a question/comment using the form below -- we love to hear from you.

Is cord blood banking a qualified expense under FSA

2009-05-16T17:41:00.000-07:00

Here's some info from this article....has anyone successfully used FSA for cord blood banking?

Your employer may offer a benefit known as Flexible Spending Accounts (FSA). FSAs are specifically designed to provide some tax relief for health care expenses. Employees that take advantage of FSAs must decide at the beginning of each year how much money to withold from their regular paycheck. This money will be put into the FSA and is only taken out on a tax-free basis for medical expenses that qualify under your plan. Check to see if your employer's FSA plan considers cord blood banking as a qualified expense. If so--you can avoid paying taxes on the money spent for the procedure.

Is Cord Blood Banking Tax Deductible?

2009-05-16T17:39:00.000-07:00

I was reading an article on whether cord blood banking is tax deductible. If you itemize expenses on your 1040 form, you can claim a deduction for any medical expense which exceeds 7.5 percent of your Adjusted Gross income. To help you figure out what is and is not deductible, the IRS publication number 502 titled "Medical and Dental Expenses" will give you a listing of allowed deductions. This publication makes no mention of cord blood banking. I wonder if any of the tax experts have an opinion on whether cord blood banking is tax deductible?

Banking cordblood in a private bank

2009-02-22T13:00:00.001-08:00

We researched this option as well. Needless to say -- with this option, the cordblood is reserved for your use if your family ever needs it.
Banking is certainly not cheap (it turns out to be appoximately $200/year, including both the initiation and storage fees). But, as one of my friends said, this is much cheaper than auto insurance. After talking to a few people and our OBGYN, we narrowed down to two companies -- CBR and ViaCord

Pro and cons of donating cord blood

2009-02-22T12:46:00.000-08:00

Pros

Donation definitely has the potential of the cordblood being useful & helping other people
Donating is very cheap (almost free)

Cons

You won't have access to your cordblood, if your family ever needs it
50% of donated cord blood is tossed :-( ; check out this link for more info. Cord Blood banks do a similar analysis and might discard the cordblood (you will not be charged if the cord blood does not meet basic transplant/banking standards). Could the chances of storing the cord blood be higher with private banks?
Genetic tests are conducted on the donated cordblood. Laws in certain states (eg: WA) require that genetic and health conditions of the cordblood are made part of the public record, associated with the mother's name. So, anyone could search public records with the mother's name and get access to that kind of :(

Welcome to the Cord Blood Banking blog!

2009-02-22T12:38:00.000-08:00

We are expecting our first baby in a couple of months. As with every other first-time parent, we had to make the decision on whether we should discard, donate or bank the cord blood. Our first reaction was that discarding doesn't make a whole lot of sense -- so, we were left with the options of donating or banking the cord blood. Hence we started our research between these two options. I will try to document some useful info that we come across to help other new parents.