A Biased View of Does Medicaid Cover Weight Loss Surgery?
If you're considering weight-loss surgery, you'll meet with a number of specialists to help you decide if weight-loss surgery is an option for you. The general medical guidelines for weight-loss surgery are based on body mass index (BMI). BMI is a formula that uses weight and height to estimate body fat.
The surgery may also be an option for an adult who meets these three conditions: BMI of 35 or higher At least one obesity-related medical condition At least six months of supervised weight-loss attempts In some cases, weight-loss surgery may be an option for adolescents. The guidelines include: BMI of 40 or higher and any obesity-related medical condition BMI of 35 or higher and a severe obesity-related medical condition Instead of using these BMI numbers as a guideline for surgery, a surgeon may use growth charts for adolescents.
Also, you may need to provide documented evidence that you weren't able to lose enough weight with a supervised program of diet and exercise. Medicare and some Medicaid programs may cover the costs. It's important to research your insurance coverage and your expected out-of-pocket costs. Your hospital may have services to help you explore options for financing your surgery.
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There are many different ways to manage weight, but which is better for our long-term health? A new study has found a link between multiple types of weight loss surgery and lower all-cause mortality rates overall. New research has uncovered an association between bariatric surgery and lower death rates. According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), of adults in the United States lives with obesity.
This kind of information, they say, had not been reliably available before, because previous studies were unable to compare the data for patients of bariatric surgery with those of individuals who had opted for nonsurgical interventions.“This study is unique in that it is demonstrates lower rates of all-cause mortality during up to 11 years of follow-up compared to non-surgical patients,” Reges told Medical News Today.“The present study has the largest aggregation of patients undergoing the three popular types of bariatric procedures,” she added, noting that the research team was “somewhat surprised to see how similar the impact on mortality was for all three types of surgery.”Reges and her team, however, warn that their study is observational, so it is difficult to infer a direct causal relationship between bariatric surgery and lower death rates.
Experts say it can be more difficult to lose weight by dieting, but it can produce the same metabolic benefits as gastric bypass surgery. Getty ImagesGastric bypass surgery has been seen in the past as one of the most effective therapies in treating or reversing type 2 diabetes. And now we know why.
“As soon as you’ve made the decision to have surgery, you should start modifying your behavior. Honestly, 90% of the success a patient achieves depends on behavior modification. Surgeons get 10% of the credit, and the other 90% goes to the patient.” The first step in healthier eating is cutting down to appropriate portion sizes and following the “My, Plate” concept.
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The protein will be important for healing and tissue repair after surgery, but there’s another reason for this step. “The primary reason is to reduce the size of the liver so it’s easier to perform surgery,” Lisa said. “Fat and sugar increase the size of the liver. This can make it difficult for surgeons during bariatric surgery, which is performed laparoscopically through small incisions in the abdomen.” Appropriate liquids are clear and include: Water Sugar-free, non-carbonated beverages (e.
There’s a surprisingly big disconnect between how obesity researchers think about the causes of and treatments for obesity and how the American public does. Researchers think some people have genetic and hormonal traits that make them more susceptible to obesity. They view obesity as a complex, chronic disease, like cancer, with many causes and subtypes.

The public, on the other hand, generally believes obesity is caused by a lack of willpower, and that it can be fixed with gym memberships and trendy diets. In one 2016 surveyof more than 1,500 Americans, 60 percent of the participants said dieting and exercise were even more effective than surgery for long-term weight loss.
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To be clear, not all weight loss surgeries are created equal: The gastric bypass and gastric sleeve operations are considered superior to the lap band, for example. And surgery isn’t for people with a few pounds to lose; it’s reserved for those with severe obesity. Even the best surgeries don’t work in some people and can cause disturbing side effects in rare cases.
It’s time we started paying attention. The obesity crisis in America really began to take off in the 1970s. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates from 2016 show that 40 percent of US adults and 19 percent of youth are obese. But long before that, doctors were searching for ways to alter people’s bodies to help them eat less food.
In the 1950s, researchers noticed that shortening the small intestines of dogs hampered their ability to absorb calories and caused them to lose weight. By the late 1960s, bariatric surgery was being tried in humans. Surgeons’ methods were crude at first but have vastly improved over the years. And some kinds of bariatric surgery (most recently, the lap band approach) have fallen out of favor.

By reducing the size of the stomach, people can’t eat as much as they used to, so they consume fewer calories. With the gastric bypass, surgeons use staples to make the stomach smaller by creating a small pouch, which can only hold about an ounce (or walnut’s worth) of food.
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And that seems to make keeping weight off a little easier. The third most common weight loss procedure in America is the lap band, though it has dramatically fallen out of favor in recent years and now only makes up about 5 percent of surgeries. The problem is the surgery doesn’t work as well for weight loss as the other procedures on offer, and it leads to many complications and more surgery.
When the lap band operation was first approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 2001, it seemed like a safe option for weight loss surgery that could be adjusted or removed at the patient’s behest. (Unlike the gastric bypass or sleeve operations, it didn’t involve permanently altering the stomach or intestines — and it could be reversed by simply removing the device.) But long-term data suggest lap band patients lose about half the amount of weight as bypass or sleeve patients.
e., the gastric bypass). They found 20 percent — or one in five — of the 25,000 lap band patients needed an additional procedure. That’s much higher than the 3 to 9 percent re-operation rate for the gastric bypass and gastric sleeve surgeries. Researchers think one reason the lap bands can fail is that they only restrict the size of the stomach, without producing the hormone and metabolic changes the sleeve and bypass do.
So the data we have now suggests the surgery can be both safe and effective on average. But there’s still more researchers need to learn about the current surgical methods being used, in particular, their very long-term effects on people after more than a decade or two, and whether surgery continues to mitigate the effects of obesity’s toll.
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One is that there’s some real variability in how people respond to it, and researchers have no way of predicting who will fare well and who won’t. This 2018 JAMA Surgery studyis a great example. The average weight loss after bypass was about 30 percent, and the majority of the study participants had lost and kept off between 20 and 30 percent of their bodyweight seven years after a bypass surgery.
While researchers can’t tell who will succeed and who will fail before a surgery, they are learning people who do well have a few things in common. In the paper, the researchers found that people who lost more weight tended to be younger when they got the surgery. They also tended to be female and white, and had a higher body mass at the start of the study.
So it wasn’t just the surgery that helped people; it was changes to their diet, too. “Everyone is quite different in terms of how they lose weight and how much they lose over time,” said Anita, Courcoulas, a bariatric surgeon who was an author on both of these papers. She thinks the reason is that there’s variability in the causes and subtypes of obesity among people, and that different people may need to be treated differently to get the best results.
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Sixty percent of the patients with Type 2 diabetes going in were still in remission seven years later. (The same wasn’t true for the group that got the lap band.) The newest NEJM study suggests teens may see these benefits even more: They were much more likely to experience remission of their diabetes and high blood pressure than adults.
Then there are the rare but disturbing psychological effects that have surfaced in adults after bariatric surgery, including a slightly elevated post-surgical risk of self-harm, suicide, and drug and alcohol use disorders. Researchers still don’t understand why this happens, but they have some ideas they’re exploring. Because of the changes in the gut after bypass and sleeve operations, patients are more sensitive to the effects of drugs and alcohol.
Then there are the important cost considerations. Without insurance, bariatric surgery can cost more than $20,000. And that doesn’t include the cost of additional operations and follow-up care. So bariatric surgery isn’t necessarily going to make a big dent in America’s obesity-related costs, which add up to about $210 billion per year.
Out of those total costs, about a third are associated with their obesity. The rest is related to other problems, like arthritis or high blood pressure that’s brought on by aging. Bariatric surgery can help cut the obesity-related costs, but not necessarily these other costs or the follow-up. Even so, bariatric surgery is considered “cost-effective,” meaning it’s as effective or better than similarly expensive interventions.
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Though many providers cover the surgery, copays can be high, and insurers often don’t pay for follow-up operations or plastic surgeries that are needed later. “Even when there is coverage, it’s quasi-coverage,” he added. “Copays can range from hundreds of dollars to over $10,000 in some policies. For some patients, surgeries are exempt from out-of-pocket maximums.” Many doctors still don’t know the basic requirements for bariatric surgery recommendation and may not be referring patients who could benefit from surgery, he added.
The least recommended weight loss treatment was bariatric surgery, prescribed for only 15 of the doctors’ morbidly obese patients. Almost all the researchers I spoke to for this story said they hoped to one day find a pill that could do for obesity what surgery does. But until then, surgery is the best thing we have for the treatment of obesity.
With obesity a worldwide epidemic, some people want to know why you can’t take a pill to lose weight and be done with it. Here are the facts. Are you an adult suffering from the disease of obesity? Have you struggled with weight loss using diet and exercise, but to no avail? If you answered yes to both of those questions, you may be wondering if there are prescription weight loss medications you can take to lose weight instead of undergoing surgery.
Both of these techniques involve restricting how much food you can eat. You also feel fuller faster during meals. But surgery is permanent, and many people fear the unknown aspects of surgery, such as side effects, and what if the surgery fails to work? Because of this fear of surgery, patients are quick to ask about weight loss medications.
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While that may be true, prescription weight loss drugs may not help in the ways you think. There are drugs that are prescribed by doctors for weight loss. But they may not offer the long-term weight loss potential that is provided by tried and true bariatric surgical procedures. Doctors who prescribe weight loss drugs usually do so only if you have serious health problems on account of your weight.
These are the same requirements doctors look for when prescribing weight loss surgery. Doctors also go by the BMI scale. Your body mass index (BMI) is a measurement of your height compared to your weight, which indicates how much fat you might be carrying. To be qualified for weight loss medications, you must have a BMI of 30 or higher.
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Before putting you on medication, the bariatric surgeon or doctor will examine your medical history and health difficulties. Your doctor will then discuss the various types of weight loss drugs with you during a consultation. Weight loss medications are not for everyone. They should not be used if you are pregnant, for example, or if you are breastfeeding.

Some do one or the other and some do both. One of the drugs on the FDA-approved list (Orlistat) interferes with fat absorption. Prescription weight loss drugs produce significant weight loss when approved for long-term use (more than 12 weeks). Just as with weight loss surgery, you must commit to adequate lifestyle changes for the drugs to have the full effect.