I was at my insurance agent's office today on another matter and

mentioned to her that I was having Lap-band surgery in a few weeks. I

am currently unemployed and have no insurance to cover my surgery so I

am making other financial arrangements to cover it out of pocket.

She proceeded to inform me about a type of major medical policy for

people who do not have insurance that will reimburse a portion of your

surgery/physician/anesthesia expense (plus other expenses if need be).

The premiums vary, but the plan I am looking at is $61 a month. Once

you have the surgery you can cancel the policy, so you are essentially

just having coverage for a month. The amount reimbursed varies

depending on the insurance but I am looking at getting back as much as

$2,000 to cover some of my expenses. It's not a ton but is more than

10% of the cost of my surgery which is nothing to sneeze at.

Just thought this was really interesting and something that people may

want to look into if they are having to dig into personal savings or

using credit to cover their surgery. (P.S. They will also write

policies on plastic surgery as well).

The explanation they gave me was because of "possible complactions that might come up " and a STUPID example they gave was say i ended up with Osteoporosis , they would have no way of knowing if it was due to the "malabsorbstion of the Vitamin D from the lap band " or if i just came down with the osteoporosis . I told my agent that's not even an ISSUE for lap band patients. She said well that's what the underwriter told me .

Basically they dont want to cover it so they dont have it.

She did say once lap band surgery had been around in the US for about 10 yrs that it might change. The insurance industry likes to look at 10 yrs of results.

As of 3 weeks or so of looking I cant find anyone to cover me with it !

Mindy

Hi just read your post. Don't know if I am doing this right or not. I was banded on Jan. 15th and too had to pay out of pocket. I would be really interested in knowing the name of the insurance you are talking about.

I was at my insurance agent's office today on another matter and

mentioned to her that I was having Lap-band surgery in a few weeks. I

am currently unemployed and have no insurance to cover my surgery so I

am making other financial arrangements to cover it out of pocket.

She proceeded to inform me about a type of major medical policy for

people who do not have insurance that will reimburse a portion of your

surgery/physician/anesthesia expense (plus other expenses if need be).

The premiums vary, but the plan I am looking at is $61 a month. Once

you have the surgery you can cancel the policy, so you are essentially

just having coverage for a month. The amount reimbursed varies

depending on the insurance but I am looking at getting back as much as

$2,000 to cover some of my expenses. It's not a ton but is more than

10% of the cost of my surgery which is nothing to sneeze at.

Just thought this was really interesting and something that people may

want to look into if they are having to dig into personal savings or

using credit to cover their surgery. (P.S. They will also write

policies on plastic surgery as well).