I guess I don't get how it works.

I was sure I wasn't covered, but the customer service girl said to have the doctor send in a predetermination letter.  My docs office faxed their usual form and a week later UHC faxed their response back and the docs office called and said everything looks good and we set up an appt for 2/3 for a consult.  Now, I have seen where people are denied right before surgery.  How does this all work?  How many times do you have to get approved?  Because I was sure I wasn't going to be covered, I still haven't gotten my hopes too far up and will not be surprised to find out the docs office was wrong.  The only problem is is that the insurance coverage that apparently approved me is through COBRA and so I am having to pay that premium even though my husband's new company just started covering us (I know for a fact that I am not covered through their plan).  This whole thing makes me crazy and after months of knowing what I wanted, I am second guessing myself on getting WLS.  Are all approvals so ambiguous?

Thanks for any input.

~Colleen

If you have an approval, you have an approval. Get a copy of it in writing. See how long it's good for (for example, my approval is valid for 6 months). You will only need to try to get approved again if you have your surgery after this approval expires.

It could be that what the surgeon's office did was just call to make sure bariatric surgery was not excluded under your coverage, meaning that they will pay for it if you meet their eligibility criteria (supervised weight loss visits, psych consult, etc).  My surgeon's office requires everyone to attend a informational seminar and at that seminar they collect your insurance info and before you have your consult they verify that you have bariatric coverage, then you have your consult, go through all the required steps and then you are submitted for insurance approval after all of those steps are completed.  So, you might want to ask if this is how they do things.  I go to a bariatric center so all I do is show up for my appts, they do all of the scheduling of tests/procedures, take care of insurance process so it is very painless.