I have health insurance through my college, and let's face it, it's the only reason I have health insurance (not that I don't want it! It's just really expensive).

They're generally a good coverage plan. Almost everything I need is covered in some way.

Except anything to help me lose weight.
So, instead of paying anything to help me lose weight in the first place, my insurance ended up paying thousands of dollars in health issues related to my weight- including sleep studies and sleep apnea treatment.

Why can't they just pay for a little preventative medicine?

Also, instead of paying to help me quit smoking, they had to pay thousands of dollars in breathing treatments and emergency room costs when I had bronchitis. (Yes, since then I've quit).

Anyone else have experiences with American Insurance and weight loss?

I think it really depends.

I've had kaiser for quite a few years and they have lots of preventative stuff. Under many health care plans, you can get nutritional counseling and even psychological counseling that could be helpful with weight loss and quitting smoking. Kaiser has lots of classes on a lot of subjects including weight loss and smoking and you can get a gym membership discount through one of their services they offer.

As of this year, my company is my medical insurance provider which I'm not exactly happy with. I really liked Kaiser. My work though offers reimbursement on gym memberships and various programs including stop smoking programs. They have information on various health topics including weight loss. They also cover nutritional and psychological counseling.

I haven't because I'm Canadian, but it does seem odd. I know students at our Uni. get a free gym membership at any of the many gyms on campus. That seems preventative - a little. Mind you, I didn't have a clue you could use that stuff when I was there and even if I did know, I wouldn't have used it. I used the campus pub alot more.

I know it can vary from school to school but I looked at the college I went to and they have nutritional programs, workshops, etc as well as a gym. Although all those programs seem to be for students, regardless of health insurance.

When I was in college, I not only had access to any of the gyms on campus, I was also able to schedule appointments with a nutritionist, and have it be covered. That being said, I went to one appointment with her, and decided that I'd do better on my own.

I didn't.

I felt the same a few years ago when I learned they would cover full maternity but not a package of birth control pills!

Yeah, my university insurance basically covers if I get hit by a bus. And then only up to $50,000.

They pay for none of my medications except my albuterol (no birth control and some chronic medications). The one good thing is they pay for most of a pap smear and about half of my blood work I have to get run every other month.

I would also wonder about what your campus offers. I know here they offer free smoking cessation, nutrition classes, gym and group classes. They have low-fee personal trainers and individual nutritionist meetings.

Ask yourself: Would you have made different choices with regards to smoking and fatty food at the time that you did, had there been the option offered? I'm going to go out on a limb and say, probably not because you were probably much younger in your "indestructable" teenage years and the diseases of obesity wouldn't be real to you at the time.

If we are talking real preventative healthcare, we need to start in our preschools and schools. We need to get RID of soda, vending machines and candy. We need to teach children to MOVE for pete's sakes!

Just my 2cents, With the greatest respect.

Yeah, what she said.

I am on Kaiser, have been for years, and there is a HUGE focus on preventive medicine. I am even required to have an annual screening of certain critical numbers like bloodsugar, HDL, total cholesterol, and blood pressure in order to avoid a monthly surcharge on my insurance; the numbers aren't provided to my employer, there's no charge for the tests, and they don't raise my insurance based on the numbers, but the testing forces me (and every other employee) to take a hard look at the numbers once a year. I have to say, it works--seeing my own crappy results last year was one of my motivations for starting my lifestyle changes.

I certainly do wish that as a society we had more of a focus on prevention, though.

here's the thing about preventive medicine though: I go to my Dr for a sore throat and she hounds me about losing weight. Tells me here's what you can't eat. For people who have trouble losing weight, it's not about eliminating things and doing the math, it's more psychological and the reason why i hate going to a Dr in the first place. As if I wouldn't get a sore throat if i were 100 pounds lighter. I kinda feel like traditional medicine (and health insurance companies) are taking the wrong approach, and perhaps it should be something more holistic. Yes, therapy should be involved.

Well, actually, I believe that with the right diet (which would naturally lead to weight loss), most everyone would get sick with colds and flu and lots of other ailments much less often. I credit the massive changes in my diet over the past year with the fact that comparatively speaking, I haven't been sick at all since then.

And weight loss isn't necessarily psychological for everyone.

sure, with the right diet, but I feel hounded by the need to diet all the time. It's sickening and makes me want to run the other way. Eating right is common sense, unless you have some other obstacle in the way. Talking to relative strangers, like my Dr, about my weight loss history and eating habits can be extremely patronizing.

Losing weight is your problem not really the health insurance plan. Like what everyone else here have said, the solution to your problem is as simple as self discipline. I mean, if you really want to get the figure you want, you'll do everything to lose weight and not the things that can add more fats to your body, not even the things that can hinder your losing weight. Or maybe, you can look for an insurer that include in their plan weight lose tips.

I wish my doctors would have been a bit more encouraging to me about weight loss. The last time I lost 70lbs, and then saw my doc (hadn't seen him since starting the diet) he didn't even comment on my weight loss...the one person who should have because it was right there in my charts that I had just undergone an amazing transformation.

I wish he'd been "hounding" me a little to get to it also...at least someone would have been nudging me. I certainly wasn't nudging myself. I was disgusted with my weight, and knew it was messing me up health-wise...I needed to be nudged.

One thing that really bothers me is that when I was 40, I was having trouble with my weight already, and I needed a hysterectomy. The doc did a full abominal hysterectomy, and then stitched up this horrible roll of fat where the incision was...it took years to dissolve, and my stomach was never the same after that...I had a pouch hanging over the incision. It seems to me the "healthiest" thing to do at that point would have been to remove enough fat before stitching me back up, to leave my abdomen smooth (not skinny, but smooth), instead of a huge roll of fat in one spot I didn't have before. I asked him why he did that and he said "we don't do tummy tucks". I wasn't asking for a tummy tuck...I got something from the surgery I didn't have before. He rearranged the fat, and knew he was cutting through all my abodominal stomach muscles that control how you hold your weight in, and yet that wasn't his concern. How I looked after was not his concern, just taking out the parts that were a problem.

Now I have a permanent droop that never goes away, no matter how much I lose weight. I would need surgery to remove it. To me, that should be part of any required abdominal surgery, and even some tummy tucking might be part of proactive health, if done to avoid a result like this. It would have made the surgery a few minutes longer, but now to remove this problem, I'd have to undergo a brand new surgery, which of course is not covered.

To me that's distorted. If I'd been paying for the surgery myself, instead of insurance, I wonder if he might not have "cared" a bit more about how it left me.