Am I a Candidate?

The surgeons at Alabama Weight Loss Surgery know that when you have been unsuccessful with diets, weights loss surgery is the only way to lose significant weight and keep it off. Insurance, such as Medicare and most Blue Cross Blue Shield plans, will pay for weight loss surgery. However, they have established their own requirements that you must meet in order for them to pay for your surgery.

Generally, a person must have a BMI of 40 or greater for insurance to pay for their surgery if that person does not have serious health problems related to obesity. If a person suffers from one or more serious health problems related to obesity (comorbidities), such as hypertension (high blood pressure), coronary artery disease, diabetes (must be on insulin or oral medication), pulmonary hypertension or severe sleep apnea, then the required BMI is lowered to 35. Insurance companies also require that you have been morbidly obese for at least three years. Furthermore, many usually require that you participate in a doctor supervised weight loss program (but Medicare does not). This requires once monthly visits to a doctor for seven consecutive months. Insurance will not pay for surgery of patients under age 18. Please note that these are insurance company requirements and are of importance only if you want your insurance company to pay for your surgery.

Many patients pay for their own surgery and therefore these insurance criteria do not apply. The surgeons at Alabama Weight Loss Surgery will perform surgery on carefully screened patients with a BMI of 30 or greater. Furthermore, if a patient has already made several weight loss attempts, another pre-op weight loss program is not required. Finally, the benefits of surgical weight loss are well documented among adolescents and we do operate on patients under age 18.

If you think you may quality for weight loss surgery take the next step and come to one of our free informative seminars. Click here for a schedule.