Are Obesity Diet Plans Covered by Insurance? The answer is it depends. If your doctor prescribes our Obesity Diet Plan due to health conditions, usually that you are morbidly obese or have other obesity related systems like Type 2 diabetes, heart disease or severe apnea and remain under your doctor’s supervision during the program or as a pre-diet consulting to lap-band surgery. Call your insurance company and explain the situation and ask, it is a cheaper option that lap band surgery.
Run-of-the-mill weight-loss programs aren’t covered by most insurance policies, according to the National Institutes of Health, but your insurer may cover prescription weight-control medications and weight-loss surgery.
The latter typically costs $25,000 to $30,000, so coverage is a really big deal. To qualify, though, you have to be morbidly obese — 80 pounds or more overweight for women, 100 pounds or more for men. You may also qualify if you’re not quite that heavy but you have a serious weight-related condition, such as Type 2 diabetes, heart disease or severe apnea.
Even if your weight-loss program isn’t covered by insurance, you may still be able to defray the cost if it’s prescribed by a doctor. In that case, you can use the pretax money you’ve put in your flexible-spending account at work to pay for it. Flexible-spending plans allow you to pay for a host of other medical expenses that may not be covered by insurance, including smoking-cessation programs, birth control, fertility treatments, orthodontia and over-the-counter medications, including aspirin. Oh, yes, and doctor-prescribed massage.
Update: Medicare Will Pay for Obesity Counseling
