Wednesday, January 09, 2008

Will Your Insurance Cover Cosmetic Surgery?

In a perfect world, you would be able to submit the bill for your cosmetic surgery to your health insurance company for full coverage of the procedure along with any kind of extra appointments that you run into along the way. However, many potential patients need to know that this is generally not the case. For the most part, health insurance companies will not cover any kind of cosmetic surgery unless it can somehow be proven to be medically necessary.

When you are looking to find out exactly what your current health insurance covers, you have several ways that you can get the information that you need. To begin with, your cosmetic surgeon's office can sometimes check with your insurance company for you in order to see what the provisions of your coverage may be. Depending on the kind of procedure you are looking to have and the reasons behind it, you may actually find that your insurance provider will cover a certain portion of it. In some cases, all of the procedure could be covered under special circumstances.

A great example of the kind of cosmetic procedure that may be covered by your health care provider would be a breast reduction. If the patient is enduring physical pain or issues due to the size of their breasts, then a reduction may be considered necessary and covered by insurance. The same coverage may come for women who need to have breast reconstruction due to a mastectomy from breast cancer and so on.

For patients who are in need of nasal surgery, there may be health insurance coverage available to cover cosmetic surgery to fix issues related to a deviated septum or other medical condition. Often times, a number of patients who have undergone weight loss surgery will be allowed one or two reconstructive surgeries to help them remove any hanging skin that is left afterward.

If you have any questions, you can always call your health care provider or look into your handbook to see what procedures may or may not be covered. Contacting the provider directly, however, will give you a better understanding of your entire policy and the kinds of cosmetic procedures that are listed.

The author is a world renowned expert on cosmetics and surgery. He is the owner and chief-medical writer of the popular site http://www.cosmeticsandsurgery.com - He spends a huge amount of time helping people decide on the proper course of treatment for cosmetic medical issues. To find out more on the topic of cosmetics and surgery visit http://www.cosmeticsandsurgery.com


By Ben Shaffer