Florida's obesity crisis – time for Medicaid to act

Obesity is a chronic, progressive disease that has an impact A third of the adults in Florida.

We cannot afford to further ignore this epidemic of the healthcare system, but for many people the comprehensive treatment of obesity is unfortunately difficult to access due to cost restrictions and insufficient insurance protection.

This is particularly difficult for our Medicaid population. There is currently no cover for obesity medication or nutritional advice and only a limited coverage for metabolic and bariatric surgery and intensive behavioral therapy. It is quite confusing that the cover for the treatment of obesity is so sparse, since 31.6% of the Medicaid -approved obesity have and Another 12.2% have diabetes.

This lack of cover emphasizes an outdated conviction that obesity is the fault of an individual and can be eliminated solely by nutritional and lifestyle changes. Although leading medical societies such as the American Medical Association have recognized obesity as a disease for many years, political and public perception have not obtained science.

The reality is that obesity is more than a disease that affects a number on a scale. It is complex and progressive, influences almost every system in the body and combines existing conditions. Untreated, obesity leads to people develop a number of other diseases such as prediabetes, type -2 diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, heart disease, stroke and cancer. Many of these diseases are chronic and need to need continuous care to effectively manage the condition.

Due to the complexity of obesity, the providers must have flexibility in their treatment approach. Each patient presents his own unique circumstances. Some patients are not suitable candidates for a bariatric operation, which requires access to alternative options such as nutritional advice and obesity medication. On the other hand, some patients need a combined approach of drug therapy, operation and intensive behavioral medicine. Regardless of the scenario, the fact remains that providers need each tool to optimize a patient's treatment plan and to rely on a realistic way for recovery.

Many state and federal political decision -makers are hardly observed in discussions on the costs of covering obesity care and consequently the considerable health advantages and considerable long -term cost savings. This one -sided equation is unfair and is rarely used for treatments for other disease states.

As a doctor who works regularly with Medicaid, who have obesity, I know that we are already paying a high price for obesity. We pay for this through emergency care, hospital stays and lost productivity. In fact, the Stop Fatation Alliance reports that the estimated medical costs for adiposity for adults are in this country approximately 147 billion US dollars a year.

In my own practice, I treated patients who have been hospitalized for months due to complications in connection with obesity. Under normal circumstances, a patient who is too sick would be released home but is not sick enough to justify a longer hospital stay, transferred to rehabilitation facility in order to continue his treatment plan.

Since the patients I worked with had weighted weights that replaced the restrictions of the rehabilitation facility, they could not be set into a lower sharpness. In addition, their acute medical illness (or the medical illness for which they were approved) made a bariatric operation too dangerous to carry out it, and without covering for other options such as obstacle medication, they had to stay in the hospital until they could be released.

Medicaid cover for comprehensive treatment of obesity would have avoided the costly scenario that I described above.

With a lower weight, patients could have used the available rehabilitation facilities, which reduces the total health expenditure for their care and released hospital resources. If the cover were available, these patients could also have started a treatment scheme that would primarily reduce their risk of hospital stays.

If we want to alleviate Florida's obesity crisis, it is important that we give patients access to comprehensive treatment of obesity. I am happy to see that the legislator already matches patients and providers on this topic. Sen. Ana Maria Rodriguez Senate Bill 648 and rep. Fabián Basabe House bill 713The guidelines for the treatment of medicaid for the treatment of obesity and the prevention of diabetes would expand the guidelines for the treatment of medicaid. These are timely laws that I hope that the entire legislature will be supported.

The expansion of covering for comprehensive treatment of obesity would undoubtedly lead to better results for patients and cost savings for the entire health system. Healthier patients require fewer medical interventions, especially if diseases that lead to subsequent diseases and complications are treated at an early stage. However, in order to make real, sustainable changes, we need support from our chosen officials who have the authority to expand access to the treatments.

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Dr. Joey Jarrard is a minimally invasive and bariatric surgeon, which is certified by the board of directors and trained in scholarships, which specializes in advanced pre -good operations and bariatric surgical revisions. He strives to ensure comprehensive, patient -oriented care and to focus on innovative surgical techniques, including robot -assisted processes. Dr. Jarrard is the chairman of the robot steering committee at Tallahassee Memorial Healthcare (TMH), where he plays a key role in promoting robot surgery to improve the results of the patients. In addition to his clinical practice, he is committed to the surgical training as an extraordinary professor of the Florida State University General Surgery Residency program, who looks after the next generation of surgeons.

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