Protecting your health is one of the most important ways to assure a good quality of life. If weight-related medical issues threaten your health, it may help to know that weight loss surgery has been shown to be safe and highly effective for the treatment of obesity. For severely overweight people, who cannot lose weight through traditional means such as dieting, weight loss surgery is a proven method of resolving or preventing chronic disease and enhancing one's quality of life.
How to Get the Help You Need
Many health insurance plans will pay for some or all of the costs involved in weight loss surgery. They do this because weight loss, no matter how it is achieved, has been shown to substantially reduce a person's overall health care usage and expenses. When a person loses a significant amount of weight, the risk of developing chronic and expensive-to-treat illnesses declines, which saves the patient and health care provider money in the long-term.
The first step is to talk to your health insurance plan representative. Coverage for weight loss surgery rose slightly in 2004, increasing from 23 percent of all employers to 27 percent, according to the National Survey of Employer-Sponsored Health Plans 2004 by Mercer Human Resource Consulting. Among large employers, 50 percent covered the surgery, up from 48 percent the year before.
Copyright 2009 NBC Health
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