The motivations for wanting lap band surgery are obvious. It is a much safer procedure than previous weight loss surgery options, is relatively affordable, requires much less recovery time, hurts less, is more easily reversible, and is less likely to result in severe complications.

But laparoscopic surgery requires modern equipment and facilities as well as highly specialized training on the part of your bariatric surgeon. This means that the procedure is not cheap, and it can be difficult to assess the types of lap band financing options that may or may not be available to you.

We have put together this guide in order to help you understand what you can do to afford the latest and greatest surgical weight loss procedure. We believe that lap band surgery financing is critical because this operation can save your life, not to mention dramatically improve your quality of living. You deserve these benefits regardless of your social-economic status, employment status, credit score, or level of insurance coverage.

If you have determined that your insurance won’t cover the cost of lap band surgery, then you will need to seek other lap band surgery financing options. Fortunately, a couple of powerful new types of healthcare financing have become available over the past few years that could prove invaluable in helping you to realize your dream of health and vitality through weight loss surgery.

One of the newer options that is attractive to a wide variety of patients are the new health credit cards that are being offered directly to consumers as a way of affording surgical treatments that would not otherwise be available to them.

Below you’ll find a comprehensive listing of these healthcare credit card options. Of course, these details may change at any time so you’ll have to get in contact with the actual providers in order to check on the specific lending services that these health finance providers which might be available to you and their terms. Also, their availability will depend on a variety of factors including the doctors you are working with, geographic location, and in some cases income and credit history.

Health Care Financing Options

• CareCredit, offered by GE Money. This credit line is offered only to the patients of approved GE Money medical providers but can be used for dental, vision, cosmetic, hearing, and even veterinary care. It is available for 3 to 18 months with a 3 percent minimum payment each month or fixed rate installment loan for up to 60 months. The interest rate is 0% if the balance is paid in full by the end of term, or 11.9 percent if you’re on the fixed rate installment plan. However, the credit limit could be an issue, as the typical maximum credit line is only $4000.
• Chase HealthAdvance. This installment loan program is offered by Chase for dental, orthodontic, vision, cosmetic, hair restoration, and weight loss surgery procedures provided by their approved provider list. Credit lines of $5,000 to $25,000 are available, but only to patients with excellent credit histories. The loan period ranges from 3 months to two years, and the interest rates go up to 11.99%, depending on credit factors. This loan is a serious option for lap band surgery financing, provided that you have excellent credit.
• Citi Health Card. This credit card program works directly with healthcare providers to offer credit to patients in need of funding. They offer three different plans: 0% interest for 3 to 18 months; a “Budget plan” for 48 months at 12.96 percent; and a “Regular revolving credit” account at 21.98 percent variable interest. Citi does not list any set limit for these health credit cards, but in our experience the credit lines tend to run low except for patients with excellent credit.
• HumanaAdvance Visa Card. This credit card is offered by Humana Healthcare in conjunction with Visa, and can be used for any health-related products or services, including medical consultations, procedures, and operations. The credit limit and APR both vary based on your credit score, as with any other credit card. This one is offered directly through employers that have Humana group plans for employees. The interest rate is 0%, and the money is taken directly from your payroll over a period of 6 months.

The financing options make it feasible for more people than ever before to finance lap band surgery regardless of insurance coverage for lap band surgery. But even with many of these tools it will be reliant upon your past credit history whether you will be able to secure adequate lap band financing, regardless of your medical need for such. This situation is and has been improving, but is not perfect. We sincerely hope that this resource will help you to finance your gastric banding surgery so that you can enjoy a healthier and happier life with the people you love.

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.

It is not something that you should enter into lightly, but rather represents a serious commitment that is a first step toward attaining a healthy and sound body.

There are also many factors that can affect lap band surgery cost, and by navigating these factors you can help to find a balance that meets your individual needs for high quality bariatric surgery at a price you can afford.

As we will be discussing extensively on this web site, there are also a number of lap band surgery financing options available to the average surgical candidate. One of the factors that plays into the ultimate price of lap band surgery is certainly location.

Different locations within the United States will have a different median price that corresponds to the popularity of the procedure in that region, the level of expertise of the particular surgeon and unit you are working with, and other various factors that affect the local economy.

It may be worth your while to travel to another region within your country to receive the surgery if you cannot find a good location to receive it that is local to you.

However, you should also be careful in deciding to travel to another region to receive any type of medical procedure, because this complicates your recovery time and could also complicate any aftercare that is necessary.

The good thing about lap band surgery is that since it is a minimally invasive laparoscopic procedure, you can expect much less recovery time and fewer complications than other types of bariatric surgeries.

This means that traveling is a more viable option than for other procedure. Within the US, you can expect lap band surgery costs to range from $17,000 all the way up to $30,000.

Various types of financing may be available to you to help you pay, and in selected cases some insurance companies may possibly help to cover these costs. However, for the average American insurance coverage cannot be relied upon and so you will want to check in advance to make sure you have secured adequate financing.

The surgery works by physically restricting the amount of food that can be taken in. The band is placed around the upper end of the stomach near the opening to the esophagus. This creates a small sack that functions like a miniature stomach which fills up very quickly. Since this upper part of the stomach sends signals to the brain that the stomach is full, the body is fooled into believing that the whole stomach has been filled.

Gradually, the smaller portion of food drains down into the lower stomach for digestion. The net effect of this is that the lap band recipient is forced to eat smaller portions, and is able to feel full after consuming these smaller amounts of food.

There are some arguments as to whether the lap band procedure is an ideal method for treating a disorder that is essentially behavioral. Regardless, lap band surgery is substantially more elegant than previous surgicalinterventions for weight loss.

Also, very importantly, the lap band procedure can be reversed, which makes its long term viability much better for patients than previous interventions which could be prone to problems over time. There is also much less risk of rupturing the stomach than with more invasive surgical weight loss modalities.