Here's the First Thing You Should Do With Your Insurance When You Decide to Have Liposuction Surgery
Before you try to get preauthorized for surgery
It can be overwhelming to think about having major surgery. Nobody goes into it lightly. But when you get to the point where you’re so big, you can’t move without a ton of effort, when you only experience pain and fatigue even when doing the bare minimum, and when you see your quality of life plummet, surgery looks more and more desirable.
However, surgery for our condition is what the medical industry considers “cosmetic” because the surgery is liposuction. Women have had difficulty getting insurance to cover surgery, and battling insurance while living with this disease can be torturous
. Most women are still not getting approved for surgery, but that is starting to change.
Class action lawsuits against several national insurance companies (UHC, Blue Cross, Kaiser, and Aetna, to name a few) have forced them to write out plan language for lipedema—specific and written out parameters under which they will approve liposuction surgery.
Other plans, like my regional insurance plan, have not yet followed suit. But, just like coverage for breast augmentation for breast cancer or body dysmorphia, there will come a time when liposuction for lipedema will have standard coverage. I’d bet money on it if I could.