Medicare-Funded Weight Loss Surgery

Well, this is a really terrible idea! If the US government thinks that stomach bypass surgery - a questionable, dangerous, expensive, last-resort option - is the best solution for permanent weight loss they're asking the wrong people (or maybe just listening to the wrong lobbyists)...

(CBS.com) - Uncle Sam Thinks Thin

The U.S. government is looking for the Holy Grail of weight loss programs: one that keeps the pounds off.

Now willing to pay for a treatment that works, Medicare, the U.S. support program for health care for the elderly and dependent children, is shunning fad diets to focus on one of the more radical solutions, stomach bypass surgery.

Despite the claims of various diets and surgical procedures, most researchers agree that no approach to weight reduction has been proven to be effective over the long haul. In eliminating Medicare's edict that obesity is not a disease, officials said they would consider paying for something, but only something that can be shown to work.

"The key piece of data that's not there is the long-term benefit of any of these particular therapies," said Steve E. Phurrough, director of coverage and analysis at the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. "That's what we're looking for."

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