Surgery Financing Guide

Possible Solutions And Ideas To Finance Your Surgery

The first question you’ll probably ask when considering surgical options for weight loss, once you’ve talked with your doctors about the benefits of lap band surgery and areconvinced that this procedure can be helpful to you, is this: Does health insurance cover lap band surgery for weight loss?

The answer to this question can be tricky, as can most thing having to do with insurance coverage. The insurance companies will do anything they can to improve profitability for their stock holders, and that usually adds up to denying you coverage for procedures that you believe you are covered for and which you should receive insurance reimbursement for.

However, if insurance fails to cover your lap band surgery, then obviously it will end up costing you a lot of money out of pocket. Take a look at our rundown of lap band surgery cost inside and outside the United States for more information on exactly how much you can expect for this bariatric procedure to set you back if you end up paying out of pocket. Chances are that it is not a risk you would like to take.

But in many cases there are few other options than to check with your insurance company and to take their word for it, and if you can figure out how to get insurance to cover lap band surgery then that will be the simplest and most elegant solution to the problem of losing weight surgically in a way that is financially feasible for you.

In order to get the insurance company to cover your weight loss surgery operation, you will first need to get certification from your physician that the procedure is medically necessary, which means that not having it will place you at undue risk of death or serious illness.

We all know that morbid obesity is the primary cause of many fatal illnesses, including heart attack, stroke, blood clots, aneurysms, vascular dementia, diabetes, etc. However, in order for your insurance company to become convinced of this fact you will have to get your doctor to agree that it is highly necessary for you to have. This may not be so easy if you are not morbidly obese, but merely obese or overweight, as there is less empirical evidence that these conditions are directly related to death and disease.

Because it depends on the doctor, insurance companies will often use their own adjustors to determine whether or not the procedure was necessary after the fact, and they tend to err on the side of the insurance company not paying for your lap band bariatric surgery regardless of how necessary your own doctor thought it was.

For this reason you should also document the official medical opinion of the bariatric weight loss specialist that you are referred to for the lap band itself. Doctors are not experts in financing operations, but they are aware that the insurance companies are tough to deal with and that you probably cannot afford to pay for such an expensive procedure out of pocket.

So you should have no trouble getting the physicians to cooperate with you in helping you to obtain official documentation of the medical necessity of your weight loss surgery operation, provided that they do actually feel it is necessary in your situation.

You can always get second opinions, but be sure to ask up front about how you can get help managing the insurance company in order to ensure that insurance covers your lap band surgery financial expenses.