Getting Insurance to Pay for Gastric Bypass Surgery

Video Transcript

"This is John Pinelli, financial representative, talking to you today about getting health insurance to pay for gastric bypass surgery. Most health insurance coverages will not gastric bypass unless the procedure is determined to be needed because the person has a life threatening problem with weight. Now a doctor can determine this and a doctor would need to determine this and make a recommendation on this in order for the person's health insurance coverage to cover this. If a doctor was to determine that this was simply something that a person wanted to do to shed 50 pounds they would probably not consider this a life threatening condition and they would not recommend the gastric bypass surgery be completed and therefore the health insurance coverage would not cover it. You could still go out and get the surgery and have it done but you would have to pay for it on your own. Now if you can get a doctor to determine that you are morbidly obese and that you absolutely need gastric bypass surgery in order to live then in many cases you can get your health insurance provider to cover this but you will basically need to provide proof that this is a life threatening condition and unless you have the surgery you will potentially die within a few years. So it is important to have that doctor's recommendation and that's essentially what determines whether or not your heath insurance coverage will or will not pay for gastric bypass surgery. So this has been John Pinelli, financial representative, talking to you today about getting your health insurance coverage to pay for gastric bypass surgery."