Body Shaping and Insurance Coverage
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Full Body Lift, Before & After
According to WebMD.com, about 63.6% of Americans are overweight while 26.5% are obese. That’s a lot of fat people!
Because the condition is bad for health, many extremely overweight and obese people go to Lap Band doctors or bariatric surgeons to reduce the size of their stomachs, eat far less and watch the weight fall off.
But there’s a catch-22.
Massive Weight Loss (MWL) describes a person who has lost 100 to 300 pounds. Because the skin of MWL patients has been stretched so much, it can’t spring back, plastic surgeons say. So skin hangs and droops on the body, often in sheets and thick rolls.
Like the woman in the accompanying before and after plastic surgery picture, MWL brings on a more serious set of problems besides finding new, smaller clothes.
Many MWL patients say sitting on loose, drooping skin is like sitting on jell-O.
For a woman who has lost 155 pounds, her life is like having a size 26 skin on a size eight body. The flopping, loose skin makes it very hard to exercise while many infections often crop up under the rolls of skin.
Additionally, a lot of extra skin hanging from the stomach and chest is hard on the back.
Also known as body lift and body contouring, body shaping is basically a face lift for the figure.
Celebrities who have had body shaping include:
- Queen Latifa
- Singer Carnie Wilson, daughter of Beach Boy Brian Wilson
- Annie Wilson, half of the HEART music group
- NBC Weatherman and funny guy Al Roker.
Body shaping usually includes some or all of the following:
- Breast lift
- Brachioplasty, removal of excess skin hanging on upper arms
- Tummy Tuck
- Buttocks lift
- Thigh lifts
Carefully read your health insurance policy to get clues on coverage for all or parts of a body lift. Experts say panniculectomy (removing the apron of skin hanging from the stomach) has the best chance of coverage.
The bottom line: find the procedures that are medically, not cosmetically, necessary. Perhaps you control a health condition like type II diabetes with exercise. But the excess skin prevents you from working out. So coverage for a tummy tuck and thigh lift may be possible.
For more information on what your health policy may cover, fill out the CSI plastic surgery insurance verification form.
admin @ November 15, 2010