New to the group and ready..

Hi,
My name is Michele and hopefully,I will be having surgery in Jan.2010.After exhausting all the diet fads and exercise regimes,I know now that this would be probably the best decision I have made for life in a long time.My only worry is the financial woes after the surgery,my job will pay half and I really don't want to do a loan or credit card to finance the rest,I too will begin school in March and don't want to commit to a loan or credit card with high intrest rates at the same time I begin school.Any advice would be greatly appreciated!!

michele, welcome to bariatric buddy. hope u will keep coming around for support and to offer your support to others.  congrats on the surgery in january.  as far as money, i don't know what to tell you,  i know overloading yourself can be very stressfull and you won't need this, especially after the surgery.   good luck to you. vick

Hi Michele,

I do not know a lot about the self pay parts, but have read where people have success with getting a medical type loan, maybe even with an interest free peroid of some sorts.  Hopefully someone will pop on with more experience with this topic.   You may also try entering a search for self pay options in the search box above. 

School sounds interesting too, what are you planning to study?

I'm so happy for you that you've decided on the surgery. It's not an easy decision to make for sure, but I have yet to meet anyone who has regretted it. I wish I could help you with the loan/payment. My insurance paid ZERO for my surgery, b/c my job declined to get the rider that would have covered weight loss surgery. I could have sued my job and they probably would have had to pay but who wants the fall out from that? My mother was good enough to pay half up front for me and I'm paying the other off in installments with the hospital. They were really good about telling me exactly how much I would need up front and working with me to find a reasonable amount to pay per month.

Good luck whatever you decided, I hope you can work it out!

Hi Michele! Welcome to our group!
The only ideas I have, were covered by Sukie. You can likely set up an agreement with all involved for a payment plan, and usually that does not incurr interest fees.
If work is paying half, do you maybe have a health insurance that might cover the other half? Or even part of it?
Another thought...perhaps you could talk to your employer and ask if they'd be willing to pay more, and then allow you to repay bit by bit anything over the initial half they agreed to, maybe a little out of each pay check? It NEVER hurts to ask, the worse case scenerio they say no and you are no further behind! Good luck and keep us posted on what you are able to work out!