MacMadame

That doesn't make it okay. It's still judgmental. Btw, being overly focused on other people isn't the kind of attitude that will serve you well in the long run, especially when it comes to weight loss. After all, there will always be someone thinner than you, who loses weight faster, who loses weight with less effort, etc. You can't focus on that and how "unfair" it is without getting side-tracked from your own situation and your own efforts.

I have all the forums I go to bookmarked. I hit my bookmark and each forum section opens up in a tab. So I never even see the home page unless I specifically go there.

There have been numerous articles about this in many business magazines. If you look at the top salaries for most companies it's many times more than the next level down. Plus there are many instances where companies have to close factories, lay off people, etc. to cut costs but that same year the Board votes to give all the top level execs bonuses. It's insane, frankly. If they can't run the business well enough to make a profit, why are they getting a *reward*? Yet that's when it's the most important to do so. And they can go out of business. Which they are well on their way to doing... How do you know I haven't got any numbers to support me? Again, there have been tons written the airline industry as well. The first thing they can do is stop thinking of themselves as being in the "airline business". They need to think about their business differently, more broadly. The successful companies do that. They have broad vision. Can you imagine if Google thought of themselves as only a search engine company or Apple thought of themselves as only a computer company? Here's something that will boggle the minds of all people who think you have to charge what something costs or not survive: the company I work for right now makes software. We recently started giving some of it away. We found we make MORE money if we start people out with a freebie. Some people come for the freebie but decide to buy the version that costs money. Many of these never would have even looked into our products if they hadn't heard about the free version. Some people take the freebie, but then they sign up for all these services to go with it ... services that cost money, services they wouldn't have signed up for if they hadn't gotten the base product for free. So it's not as simple as "it costs 20000 to fly this flight with 200 seats so I have to sell 200 tickets at $100 each." Thanks for not being condensing. :confused: Nobody said airlines have it good or that their execs make more than other execs. They are in trouble. But their answers are short-sighted. They are focusing on costs. They aren't using their imagination. They aren't showing me vision. And they aren't cutting the big costs -- executive salaries and bonuses. Coke and Pepsi used to spend millions of dollars a year fighting over a few percentage points of market share in the soft drink market. While they weren't looking, bottled-water and health drinks and energy drinks stole their market share out from under them. Instead of saying "we're a soft drink company and our expenses aren't being covered by our sales so we need to raise the price of soft drinks", they got creative. Pepsi bought Pizza Hut and Taco Bell -- which now exclusively sell Pepsi products. These companies got into the snack market too. So if you don't pick their drinks to go with your chips, maybe you'll at least pick their chips. They also expanded into the energy drink and health drink and bottled-water fields so they now have competitors in those niches. But then they went one-up ... instead of Coke just making a competitor to Vitamin Water, they added vitamins to Diet Coke! I think that's freaking brilliant. Keep all those Diet Coke drinkers in the fold instead of switching to one of the vitamin-added waters, which might not be *your* vitamin-added water. Pepsi and Coke could have been down for the count when the market changed, but instead they rethought their businesses. That's why they've been around forever and probably always will be. The airlines could take a few lessons from them.

I started with Dr. Foster but have to change because of insurance issues, too. Now I'm looking at Dr. Estakhri in Pleasanton. It's a little closer to home but a lot farther from work.

My experience has been that there is a point of diminishing returns and at some point, you don't really get healthier. I know when I was 145 lb., my blood pressure was around 90/54 and my cholesterol was 155. I actually got down to 135 for a while and none of my numbers improved. Plus if my blood pressure had gotten any lower, I would have needed one of those 'fainting couches' from the time when women wore corsets. I was already at the point where I had trouble giving blood regularly at that BP. Yet the charts say that 145 is overweight for me. You should have seen me, though. I was HOT. Yeah, I had a bit of belly, but that was it. If I'd had PS to get rid of it, I would have dropped to 140 at most. Which STILL was overweight on the charts. But I wouldn't have been able to drop any lower (I only got to 135 because I had gallbladder surgery) unless I had a breast reduction and found some way to make my bones weigh less. I like my boobies. I'm not getting them cut off so some chart says I'm healthy! :biggrin: Now later one I did creep up to 155 and at that point, I could see a difference in my health. But not between 145 and 135.

Every time I post to ask about a doctor in our area... no one says anything! Where are all the SF Bay people? Come out of the wood work and say HI! :biggrin:

We just finished 2006 and will file an extension for 2007. I still have some numbers to find for it and I can't get to it today. Getting the 2006 out is a HUGE step though. There was a time there I thought I'd have rob my (ex) accountant's house to get my records back.

Pleasanton is probably as far but up the 680 corridor and not the 101. So the commute should be more pleasant. My dh goes up 680 every day in that direction and it's against traffic. They have a boatload of car places right along 680 in Pleasanton and then a bit farther up in Dublin they have two boatloads. :grin: I'm assuming there isn't a lot of work that close to Gilroy though. (But, hey, at least you have garlic. Yum, garlic.)

It sucks to be poor enough to need Medicaid. Even if it meant my WLS was paid for, I wouldn't trade with those people. Therefore, I'm not worried that they have it "better" than me in this one area.

I think the government should stay out of religion mostly. But I also think that lots of people call themselves a religion so they can get away with doing bad things and God and true belief has nothing to do with it. This sect is a prime example. I hope they get their asses handed to them.

The salaries of most top execs are all out of whack compared to what the rest of the employees make. This bugs because the way companies make a profit is to squeeze more and more out of less and less employees. But the people at the top -- the ones that make the bad decisions that cause their companies to not be profitable -- don't tighten their belts. They don't. But it's not because fat people aren't paying for two seats. It's because they are extremely badly run with no consumer focus. If you aren't innovative or consumer-driven, you can't say in business -- unless you have a monopoly or serious government subsidy. A company that pisses on its customers soon doesn't have any. It's fair if you want to have a fair, but consumer-unfriendly policy. If less people fly, prices WILL go up. In fact, less people are flying and that's part of the problem. The airlines are driving away their customer-base without a plan in place to get a new customer-base. Or maybe stop believing the load of bull that the airlines hand out. :biggrin: If less and less people fly, there are less people to spread out the fixed costs of running the business. Every business has fixed costs and you need a customer base that pays for them or you have to charge extremely high prices -- higher than the market will bare ... which means Chapter 11 or Chapter 7 is in your future. I used to have my own business. I'm well aware of how it all works. You have to balance everything against what it takes to get and keep customers. If your business model includes charging lots more than your customers are willing to pay for the service you provide, it's not going to work. When I business is faced with economic woes, they have several options. 1) They can cut costs. There is often some slop that can be cut out. But cut too much and morale of your staff suffers and the service you provide will suffer too. 2) They can change the service/products they sell. 3) They can find new markets for their services that have a better profit margin. If they just do #1, it will work for a while, but it won't work forever. #2 and #3 are HARD and not every company can figure out how to do them effectively. So far, the airlines haven't been impressing me with their efforts, such as they are. They seem stuck on #1 and, as I said, that only goes so far for so long. It's not just BMI. It's how you are shaped. Plenty of people smaller than me can fit in a seat -- if they never move. But that's not realistic. You have to move around. Which means you will keep slopping over. Plus plenty of people with BMIs that are lower than 43 don't fit in the seats. If you do, you are very lucky. Don't fly! Which will really help airlines. You can run your company any way you want. IF you want to STAY in business, you have to offer customers a product or service they want at a price they are willing to pay for it.

Sure, it's 1-800-HEAVEN hee hee

I'm in a similar boat. My current insurance excludes WLS but my company has other plans with other companies that cover it. So I'm thinking about switching during open enrollment. But switching in the middle really throws a monkey wrench into things. The surgeon consult is expensive so you need to wait until you are covered but then they want you to lose weight. I want to start losing weight now but if I start now, I'll probably get too low a BMI to be covered. If I wait until Aug., I'll be having surgery in the middle of the holidays -- a time I really need to be at 100%. By Jan. things are crazy at work so I'll miss my window and have to wait until Fall '09. Obviously, I'd rather not do that. :biggrin: I'm really seriously thinking about Mexico again. I'd rather get it done locally as there are several excellent surgeons here but these hoops I have to jump through are driving me crazy. I don't have a problem with the pre-op requirements. I'm happy to go through any pre-op program or do any pre-op testing that is required. It's the phone calls to insurance where you get a different answer every time and not being able to control my own destiny (even more than normal when it comes to the US health system) that is driving me batty!

I didn't get to far with ThinnerFuture because of insurance issues. They want me to wait until I switch to my new insurance that covers WLS but they aren't in the network for the new insurance. Plus, Dr. Foster is in my network, but El Camino was not. I didn't realize that to start. I like the hoops they make you jump through pre-op. I think nutritional counseling and a psych eval and keeping a food diary for a week are reasonable. Plus I really liked Janet, the patient coordinator. I never got to meet anyone else so I haven't got much else to add.

I like all the suggestions for how to "gain" without actually eating more. Like drinking as much Water as you can before you get to the office and wearing heavy clothes and putting loose change in your pocket. If I only had to gain a few pounds, that's what I'd do.

There are some support groups at the various hospitals. There is a monthly one at Mills-Peninsula in San Mateo and another at El Camino in Mountain View that I have the info for. Where exactly are you in SF?

A while back someone posted the official clinical policy on bariatric surgery for Aetna. It looks like I won't be able to get this surgery with Aetna because my employer excludes it and I will have to switch to one of our United Heathcare policies. So I'd like to find the official policy for UHC. I haven't been able to find it on their web site though. I'm interested in what their policy is for approval and also what their requirements are. I meet the NIH guidelines... BMI over 40 plus 1 co-morbidity. But when I called our UHC hotline, they said they only approve if you are doing it to treat another disease and it wasn't clear if hypertension was one of the ones they allowed. It's hard to get info out of them since I'm not a member yet (plus every time you call these companies, you get a different answer). If I'm not getting approved with either one, I want to stick with Aetna as the policy I have with them suits my needs very well and the UHC policies we have are what are called "affinity" plans and I don't think will work as well for our family. But if switching means getting insurance to pay for it, then I'll switch.

I'm really curious because UHC seems to have a bunch of different policies rather than one policy. Because everyone on here seems to be told a different answer. I was told it would only be approved if I had a co-morbidity and WLS was considered a "cure" for it when I called on the phone. But I'm finding you can call insurance companies five different days and get five different answers so I really want something in *writing*! I'm going to have them send me a copy of the policy (not the plan summary) and see if I can get them to fax me their requirements. I'd feel better if I knew ahead of times what they were though. It makes it easier to judge if you are getting wrong info.

I still haven't done mine from 2006.

That picture reminds me of Mr. Mac. He is extremely overweight in his stomach area. He also has high cholesterol, asthma, allergies and, I suspect, sleep apnea (not that I can get him to agree to be tested for it). Yet his BMI is lower than mine! He's definitely not healthier than I am though and most people, when they look at him, think he's much heavier than I am. In fact, when I went to visit my next-door neighbor to talk about WLS (he's had GBS), he thought I was asking him *for* Mr. Mac and not myself. Some day we'll have a much better measure of health than BMI and everyone will look at the BMI chart and say "how quaint!". :huh2: In the meantime, they are better than the charts they replaced, but they still aren't the be-all and end-all of how to measure your health.

Another of my pet peeves... arbitrary enforcement or lack of enforcement of arbitrary rules and policies. I have been on MANY flights where people didn't fit in their seats but weren't made to buy an extra ticket. But every once in a while an airline employee decides to crack down just by some arbitrary eyeballing and we all turn a blind eye (when it isn't us) because we all have been impinged on at some time flying and secretly we think "yeah, someone's doing something about it!" But it's all for show and we still get stuffed into our tiny seats with inadequate leg room next to Mr. I Want Two Armrests. I no longer fly any more, if I can at all help it. In fact, I drove from CA to Kansas City two summers ago because it was easier and cheaper than flying, given some of the stuff I had to bring with me. That's what the airlines want you to believe. But have you looked at the salaries and bonus plans of their top executives? How come they don't cut those? No, it's always customer service that goes. Then they tell us that they *have* to do it that way, either for our own good or because we demand reasonable ticket prices. Well, I'm not buying it... If airlines want only thin people to fly, they are going about it exactly the right way. But if they want as many people to fly as possible, including the 60% of Americans who are overweight, then they need to rethink their policies. :huh2:

If WLS surgery is excluded for your particular policy, of course they aren't going to turn around and pay to have it in Mexico. They don't pay for it period, it's excluded. Beats me, but it's not a particularly special policy. I've been reading articles about people who got it done in Mexico and BCBS paid for it before I even 'met' snowbird here at LBT.com. It's not a big secret if anyone can read an article in the paper about it.

I was turned down for individual health insurance by Blue Shield (or was it Blue Cross?) of CA in few years ago. So was my husband. They accepted our (normal-weighted) children with no problem though. Luckily he found a job right after that and we both got insurance that way. That was one of the shocks that nudge me into considering WLS, in fact.

But the stewardess said it was THE LAW. She wouldn't lie, would she?

She looks so happy to have a lap band and be on LBT! :rolleyes2: