My experience w BC of CA PPO

Hello All, This is my first post. I have been approved for the lapband from my Blue Cross of CA PPO. I wanted to share my insurance experience. I work for the University of California and we have several choices for Insurance- Kaiser, Health Net, Cigna Choice,  Blue Cross Plus and Blue Cross PPO.  I researched all my choices by reading the coverage manual and by calling different surgeon's insurance specialist. I found that the consensus was that Blue Cross of CA PPO has the simplist requirements. The downside was that I would have to pay for 20%  ( $4000) of the surgery out of pocket. The only requirements was the surgeon consultation, nutritionist, pysch eval and labwork.  I needed no PCP referalls or extensive medical history.  I completed the requirements in 2 weeks and was able to recieve approval in 5 days .  To help pay my 20% I put $3000 in a Healthcare Spending Account that is provided by my job.  I recieved a Visa with a $3000  balance to spend only on medical expenses . To pay this back $250 dollars will be taken out of my paycheck pre-tax for a year. Whew- Sorry for the long post but I wanted to share my experience. By the way my BMI is 43