How do I get APPROVED??????

Help !!! Can anyone tell me - what I should do to put everything in to place so that my chances of approval will good... I have quite a few co-morbitities and have a BMI of 43. I have been overweight for 16 years. I do not have a whole lot of medically supervised diet plans, health insurance had been a problem at times !! So I pretty much was on my own. I know I need to lose weight in order to improve my health and it seems like wls is the only way to go. How do I convince my insurance of this.... For all of you who are experienced with this please help... Thanks. Rhonda

Rhonda, Congratulations on making a decision to take control of your life and your health. The good news is while many insurance companies require a medically supervised diet prior to approval not all of them do. Some only require diet histories. The first thing you need to do is to investigate the various surgical procedures and decide which ones you wish to investigate further. There are several procedures that are currently being done. The RNY is done most often I believe, but there is also the Lap Band and the Duodenal Switch and a few others. The next thing is to find out if your insurance covers WLS and if it does cover WLS, which procedures does it cover. Many people find that their insurance does not cover WLS at all, some find that their insurance will cover some procedures but not the one they want and then there are the lucky ones that find their insurance will cover the procedure that they want. The next step would be to find out what your insurance requires for approval and if you have to use a particular surgeon. Next is to start interviewing surgeons. Go to as many information sessions as you can and learn all you can about the surgeon and their program. Not all surgeons do everything the same way. For that reason not every surgeon is a good match to every patient. But, you will find the surgeon that is a perfect match for you. Generally the surgeons office will take care of getting your insurance approval and will let you know exactly what you will need to do. But, even though the surgeons office generally handles the approval process, you will need to understand the process and stay on top of it, that is why you need to know what your insurance requirements are. One of the things you can do to start getting ready is to assemble any records you have of any previous weight loss attempts. If you took diet pills, go ahead and request those medical records, the same for any supervised diets. If you were on weigh****chers and you have your records from that program get those things together. Get anything you can that documents how you have tried in the past. You can also make a log up that shows all of the diets you have ever been on. Show the name of the diet when you started and when you quit, along with starting and ending weight and if the diet was supervised and by whom. I have a form I can send you if you will send me an email. Even if it is just a diet you went on yourself -- you want it on the list. You can use an aproximate date -- like the spring of 1997 -- just be sure to get them all listed. Even the crazy diets you made it yourself. The Florida board is an excellent place to get information about the various surgeries as well as surgeons and insurance and to get support and encouragement along the way. Many times insurance approval is a bumpy road and there are many, many people who post on this board, who will have been through the exact same thing you are going through. Here you will find the help and advice that you need to get through the process . Good luck and let us know how we can help. Red