Going Into Debt to Save a Life: Family Frustrated That Insurance Won't Pay for Bariatric Surgery

Exactly as it should be, despite the "poor, poor pitiful me" spin the POS morons at ABCNews put on the story.

"Johnna VinZant's life revolved around keeping herself alive. Routine visits to various doctors' offices had become daily 'pit stops' -- regular maintenance checks to keep her going.

If the average person saw VinZant on the street, they might have looked at her and seen someone who needed to go on a diet. She is, in fact, morbidly obese -- her 5-foot-3-inch frame carried between 270 and 280 pounds on average.

The weight was literally killing her. She had a laundry list of complications, including diabetes, sleep apnea that strained her heart, spinal disc disease, arthritis and incontinence -- and the list went on.

'Some mornings I wake and I can't even get out of bed. My legs don't work. Can't get to the bathroom. It's scary,' she said."

But not scary enough to do anything about it.

"So VinZant decided to make the gamble of her life. She said doctors had told her that bariatric surgery was a necessity because time was running out.

The surgery involved stapling her stomach to make a small pouch, leaving her no choice but to eat less because there's so little space.

She needed to lose weight, a lot of weight, and fast. There was just one problem -- her insurance company suggested a diet program and rejected her request for surgery coverage.

VinZant recognized that her request for surgery to some might be seen as an unnecessary.

'I've been on several different diets,' she said. 'I've been on several different exercise programs. I'm not a candy bar person. I don't sit and eat Bon Bons in my room at night. I don't have that kind of problem.'

VinZant said that her weight was caused by a hormone imbalance and that no amount of weight loss programs would fix it. Her doctor agreed.

'And all this is, is discrimination,' said Dr. Alan Wittgrove. 'What they want her to do is to submit to a process that is known to fail, that is diets for morbidly obese individuals in lieu of having something that is known to be successful in a very high percentage of the population. No other place in medicine would they do that.'"

There is absolutely no "hormone imbalance" that can defeat Calories In, Calories Out.

Nor is it discrimination. It is proper allocation of resources and an insurer unwilling to pay to rescue this person from her irresponsible behavior and subsequent diseases of choice.

And this Dr. Wittgrove is IMHO an idiot or an opportunist or both or worse.

Likely both or worse. He makes money from performing the IMHO malpractice known as bariatric surgery:

"Wittgrove performed the surgery."

And what did it take to relieve the horrible complaints of this bronto-sapien?

"A week and a half later, VinZant was ready to head home. At her final checkup, she had already lost 14 pounds, her diabetes was gone and she could walk without pain."

14 pounds that this whiner claimed she could not lose.

Bulls**t.

Fortunately the insurance company did not fall her her crap.

"VinZant recently moved to Minneapolis, Minn., after living in tiny Soldotna, Alaska. She has three kids and a husband who does painting and drywall work. Paying for the surgery on her own would have been impossible.

Her father, Skip Dove, is a school custodian and he couldn't afford the roughly $30,000 surgery either.

But he's paying for it anyway on a credit card with a 22 percent interest rate.

'It's a bad idea,' he said. 'And that's why the strategy is to get the house refinanced and get some of the equity and put it in the credit card.'

He worried his daughter would die without the surgery. He'd watched her deteriorate year by year as her weight went up while her ability to do the simplest things vanished."

Where was his worrying as his elephantine daughter went from pig to pachyderm?

These people are getting what they deserve and so are the rest of us - we do not have to pay for this person's diseases of choice.

This is how it should be when it comes to overweight/obesity.

And if ABCNEws is so exercised over this, why don't they pay for her surgery?

MSM scum.