It is simple, if your insurance will cover gastric bypass surgery or other obesity related procedures they better cover a personal trainer and gym membership to boot. As a matter of fact some insurances do cover a personal trainer (very few). Call your insurance company and ask. If insurance companies don’t get on board, Congress should draft legislation requiring they provide one if they provide the other.
Some people cannot afford the time and money to go to the gym and their insurance tells them they have one choice or die, surgery. Now let’s think about this in context. The cost of gastric bypass surgery can reach $30,000. That is the value of a really nice car, a down-payment on a house or the cost to send one of your kids to a local college. Your insurance company will pay this, with possibly drastic results such as gaining the weight back, blood clots in your legs, a leak of one of the staple lines in the stomach to name a few of the short-term complications.
What if you could choose between a gym membership along with a personal trainer versus surgery? Personally, I would like to be able to choose between alternative to the scalpel. I believe we should be able to have a choice. The current system doesn’t allow for it.
Cost Comparison
Let’s look at costs, a personal trainer it will run about $50-$100/hr and the gym membership about $30/month. If you meet a personal trainer once a week for two hours at $100 that’s $800 a month on top of the $30 a month for the membership. Add this all up and the insurance company would pay $9,960 for the whole year! Let’s just say it takes the average obese person three years to get in shape with a personal trainer guiding them along. Only then will it cost approximately the $30,000 it takes to pay for gastric bypass surgery. After the three-year threshold, these people will look like models and will probably be out of the danger zone within a year.
I’m fine with the insurance company cutting off the free privileges of a personal trainer and gym membership after a year. Make it based off of the same system of eminent mortally the gastric bypass surgery is. People’s lives are at sake. Should we be able to choose the healthier more permanent option?
It’s About Choice
As for long-term possible complications from gastric bypass surgery include the inability to absorb certain vitamin and minerals, the Mayo Clinic has given us a full list of potential problems here. Now I’m not going to advocate whether or not a person should get surgery to help with his or her weight loss, but I do believe is ridiculous and promotes the obesity epidemic in America that insurers will cover these surgeries, but they won’t cover the natural and more permanent way to deal with these problems.
If an insurance company OKs a person for surgery to cure obesity, they should also pay for alternatives such as a personal trainer and gym membership. Frankly, it is in the insurance company’s best interest to get these people healthy in the most affordable and long-term method possible.
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