Hello All,

I was orginally told by the gal who submitts my records to the insurance company from the surgeon's office, that it takes from 3-10 days to get an answer from insurance. She had turned in my records last week as I was to have been banded today( Thursday, june 8th) . When I called on Tuesday to see oif she had talked to Aetna, she said she had and they had not looked at my records yet so we would have to postpone my surgery until we hear from them. I asked her how long does that takes and she said "they never will tell us" maybe a couple of weeks.

Not sure where I go from here. Any ideas???

Just wondering if anyone else had met with this same situation? I guess I will call back to the surgeon's office in a couple of weeks and see if they have heard any thing more. Or I could call directly myself to the insurance, not quite sure which way to go, in as much as the surgeon's office made the initial request so I would kind of feel like I was butting in.

I called my ins co almost daily after my surgeon sent in my papers. Which was good because my initial request packet was *lost*. It would have been months before I knew if I had not made almost daily calls. Then my second packet was missing vital information that the ins co had to have before they would approve it. It took another month to get that information to them. Again if I had not called it would have really taken forever to find out.

Once I had everything to the ins co it took 48 hours for them to give approval.

It took an act of Congress almost just to get everything there. I have one of the historically better ins co to work with.

Aetna has a rep for being a bear. I would not rely on the doctors office.

I would call at least twice a week just to make *sure* they have everything they *need*.

Others may feel different. This is what I would do.

I found Tuesday to be the day that usually had new information. Seems on Friday it would leave whoever's desk it was on but it would take until Tuesday for it to actually get into the computer.

Myra