Insurance & Revisions RNY

Good morning everyone. Just looking for some information! I'm 16 years out from my Open RNY. I did great until last 2 years. I've talked to a new surgeon and he's approved me for a revision. Problem is my husbands insurance doesn't cover bariatric surgery. So I'm gonna go back to work. If you was recently approved for surgery and your insurance is paying PLEASE tell me where you work. I'm only gonna apply for jobs with companies that I know cover Bariatric Surgery.

In the past, I read here that Home Depot had Insurance that covered WLS.

What would you be revising to? The only major revision is to DS, and going from RNY to DS is a big deal. Very complicated and risky. The minor revisions to RNY have really sketchy results.

Can your husband switch his plan at the next enrollment period to a policy that does cover bariatrics?

I'm not sure how you can get reliable information, but it's complicated. Large companies have different plans in different parts of the country. And even if a plan covers surgery, more and more plans have an exclusion for one weight loss surgery per life. That counts even if you had the surgery years before, with another insurer.

You could always just ignore the insurance altogether, find the highest paying job, and self pay for surgery. It's much cheaper in Mexico, and they have surgeons and hospitals superior to many of ours.

Government jobs are more apt to cover surgery than private employers.

Thanks for your reply. My surgeon is basically just going to redo my entire RNY so I wont be revising to anything else. My husband's insurance doesn't include bariatric surgery in any of the plans. I'm trying to avoid doing self-pay considering it's $20,000. I spoke to a surgeon that does the surgery in Mexico but my husband is very scared of going out of the country to have the procedure done. Plus I've heard that it's hard to find a US dr to see you if you go out of the country to have surgery and have complications. My surgeon feels he will not have any issues getting me approved for the redo on my bypass due to some of the issues that I'm having. They do this all the time with insurance so I'm trusting his best judgment.

How do you redo an RNY? There would be nothing to redo since the pouch is already created and the intestines already bypassed. Do you mean that he's going to make the stoma smaller? There are several surgeries that tighten the stoma. Most of them offer poor results. Most people who have these procedures only lose about 20 pounds. I know a lot of people who have had their RNY converted to a Distal RNY (longer channel) and they have nothing but trouble.

Be careful...there are a lot of surgeons out there that tell you they are going to do one type of surgery and do another. This is your body. Make sure you know exactly what that surgeon is going to do and then get the surgical report after.

I'm going to be honest with you. It seems many insurance companies are doing a once in a lifetime WLS. So just because you find a company who's insurance offers WLS they may not approve you for a revision because you already had a WLS done. It does not matter if it was through them or not. I have seen it happen over the past several years.

But like others have said Home Depot, Starbucks, possibly Lowes.

Just remember also that you may have to work full-time to qualify for medical insurance, there may or may not be a 6 month supervised diet even though it is a revision. I know for my revision I had to do everything over again minus the supervised diet and it took my almost a year until I was able to get my lap band out and have the bypass done. Just stuff to think about.