TIME TO GET POLITICAL!

I'm enclosing a letter I wrote to the local papers, but didn't get published. I feel so lucky that I was one of the people who came in just under the insurance cancellation wire and got my surgery, and also feel responsible for doing my best to help those who are now being turned down right and left to get their lives saved too. If you would like to help me spearhead Arizona legislation to force insurance companies to cover medically necessary WLS surgery (including drafting a bill, finding legislators to sponsor it, interfacing with the press in your locality, and speaking to groups and other legislators to gain their support and encourage letter writing campaigns to let the politicos know we're out here), please contact me at [email protected]. This is gonna be a big project, but I'm willing to put some time in on it and hope I can find other motivated Arizonans. Here's the letter: I had weight loss surgery 9 months ago. I've since dropped 130 pounds and completely reclaimed a life that would have been lost to a complex of obesity related health problems. Most people who need this surgery are just as sure of their own impending death as I was - and with good reason. The disease process that accompanies morbid obesity is a profound one. Just a few of the ailments which usually show up in fatal combinations are diabetes, high blood pressure, severe arthritis, acid reflux disease, esophageal erosion, sleep apnia, incontinence, and circulatory and respiratory problems. Every one of these maladies either gets significantly better or completely goes away within months after weight loss surgery, returning people to normal lives and even allowing the formerly handicapped to go back to work and resume normal lives. People who suffered severe diabetes or high blood pressure often wind up free of their meds completely! The National Institutes of Health published a study in 1993 showing that dieters have only a 3 to 5% chance of dropping to a healthy weight and keeping it off in the long term. In stark contrast with those statistics, current data shows that stomach surgery patients (normally the least likely to succeed on any diet), keep the bulk of what they lose off between 75 to 85% of the time. Given all that, it might seem like a no brainer that insurance companies should cover this proceedure as a matter of course. People with little hope of living more than another couple of years, can get an easy 20 or 30 more healthy and productive years added to their life spans. Comparing that with heart bypass surgery, which adds an average of 12 more years of life expectancy, one can't help but be convinced that it's a procedure that pays off in spades. But as I write this, more and more insurance companies are backing out of their coverage completely or encouraging contracting employers to buy policies with weight loss surgery exclusions - leaving their morbidly obese policy holders to simply die. Weight loss surgery costs an average of 25,000 dollars. The droves of morbidly obese who now realize that surgery is their only hope are now touted to be an actuarial nightmare for insurance providers hoping to reign in costs. But what distinguishes us as being less deserving than those who seek life saving heart surgery? Cost? No. It's about the same. Demographics? Definitely. We wouldn't think about excluding heart bypass surgery from an insurance contract because the class of people who use it most are those who have the most financial and political clout in this society, 40-60 year old men. Conversely, those who are most likely to be obese are precisely the groups of people who have been historically marginalized. We are much more likely to be female, low income, and/or people of color. Add to that the stigma of being obese from the time we're chubby children on out, and the deck becomes stacked. 9 out of 10 stomach bypass patients are women. Morbid obesity is, by and large, our disease domain. As with just about every aspect of our health care, including pregnancy, we are often penalized and asked to pay extra for coverage and treatment. Women are, by and large, still not the bosses of companies, corporations or municipalities - or the legislators that make decisions on what must be covered. The male company owner would never imagine being talked out of having employees covered for heart bypass. But stomach bypass? - Optional. Popular myth also considers obesity not to be a disease. The perception that we should simply shut our mouths - quit stuffing food in and all would be well! - is a pervasive one in this society. Although science has for many years proven that obesity is a disease process rather than just a moral failure, we still buy into the blame game and the lucrative deceptions of the diet industry. It's much easier to discriminate against someone if we can convince ourselves that her troubles are her own fault and easy enough to cure if she'd just be more "responsible". But all things are not equal. We would never think of insisting that a heavy meat eater pay more for his policy or go on the Pritikin diet for a year before heart by-pass surgery, but it's de rigeur for those few insurance companies that do cover weight loss surgery to block a morbidly obese patient from accessing treatment until she's gone on a doctor supervised diet of 6 months to two years! And this, when National Institutes of Health data show that standard diets simply don't work. Legislation is the only avenue we have for cutting through societal prejudice and making this surgery adequately available. More and more, insurance companies will opt to offer businesses financial incentives not to cover this surgery if they can. We Arizonans need to tell them, by law - and in no uncertain terms- that they must not exclude this procedure from employee contracts. A number of other states have already done so. With 1 out of every of 5 people in this society fighting obesity, hundreds of thousands of American lives will be cut short if we don't insist that this surgery be available to those who so desperately need it. Let's hope that those of us who have had our lives saved by this operation will find the courage to camp out on our state legislators' doorsteps until exclusions of obesity surgery are no longer allowed. We need to stand up and fight hard for the rights of the ones who come behind us to experience the same reprieve from death that we've been given. And, may the rest of our communities someday come to the understanding that the obese - whether predominantly poor, brown or female - are just as deserving to live to see our children grow up as everyone else. The effect of those children losing us will cost society so much more than the price of a twenty five thousand dollar surgery. S. Jackter Mother and Community Activist

Fantastic letter Stephanie!!!! The soup I had at your house today, was very good, too. Ty for your invite into your home today. Your an excellant writer and journalist. I hope there is alot of response to this crime of employeers across Az. cancelling WLS surgery coverage for their employees and family members. Something needs to be done to wake up Arizonans to fact we need legislation so WLS surgery for the medically necessary is not a part of history but a hope for all who need it. Sandy Newkirk....Tucson...Dr. Fang at St. Lukes Medical Center....Nov. 4-2004---open---Rny---Revision---70 lbs down forever.

Thanks Sandy! It's good to see you're back on your feet! Well, I guess you never do go off your feet when you've got "walking" pneumonia! (Bad joke, I know). Our talk got me motivated. It may take a long time to get this bill in motion, but I'm gonna start gnawing away at it until I get some result. Glad to know you and Deanne are on board with it too. I just hope we can get enough other people motivated on this issue to make it a go. I'm thinking the first thing to do is research the bill in California that keeps insurance companies fron denying coverage. I'll try to look that up on the web tonight. Anybody got any site where they may have seen it already? I should probably ask on the obesity help california board or maybe the cigna_squeakywheels site. Maybe you could also post those articles that you gleaned from Gary Visco here. As he mentioned, they were very informative about how insurance companies look at this proceedure. Keep gettin' better! - Stephanie J

Stephanie, You go girl. I am behind you 100% Deanne