I'll have to make a decision of the level of BLIS protection that I will take and I wanted to get input to see how other people reach that decision. If you are a self-pay patient, how did you decide (how will you decide) what level of complication protection to take if your surgeon offers the BLIS complication protection coverage.

For those who may not know, some US surgeons offer a complication protection program for their self-pay patients through a company named BLIS. It's not legally considered an insurance policy for the patient, but if you think of it that way you won't be too far off. In a nutshell, what it does is, for a fee, it will provide you protection for certain covered complications for a period of time after surgery. The premiums vary from surgeon to surgeon depending on how many "claims" have been filed by that surgeon's patients.

So the coverage is offered in three different parts. What is covered and the approximate costs for my surgeon is shown below:

A. Cardiopulmonary/thromboembolic (90 days) $500.

B. Bleeding, Infection, Leak, Perforation (90 days) $1300.

C. Stenosis (90 days) $200 (My surgeon requires you to get some level of stenosis protection)

Stenosis (36 months) $300 (there are some other Stenois packages that I am omitting)

So for me to take all the coverages I would need to pay around $2,000, which I view as a big chunk of money. I could skip most of the coverage and probably be OK. After all I think the rate of any complication from getting sleeved is in the range of 5% and the risk of serious complications in the first 30 days is around 1%. That means the odds are between 100 to 1 and 20 to 1 in my favor that I will never need the protection. On the other hand, if I do have a problem, the costs could be very high.

I wish they were more transparent as a company and that they disclosed what percentage of the premiums are actually paid out in claims. I never buy the extended warranty on cars, or microwaves or TV sets because I know what a bad financial deal they are, and if something like that goes bad, I can somehow come up with the money to buy another. On the other hand, I've always heard that it makes good sense to take insurance against the risks you cannot afford to pay out of pocket. If I had a very serious complication, I would not be able to afford to pay for it.

What I would like to know is what level of BLIS protection you got (or you will get) and why you made that decision.

This was an excellent question and I am in the same boat today. Did you get an answer in your research? May I ask what you ended up choosing? My surgeon offers option b included in their self pay cash price but has said I can select some add-ons from blis fir more coverage.