Posted by Racer on November 1, 2006, at 13:53:07
A few months ago, I was approached for an article about problems accessing treatment for eating disorders because of insurance restrictions. I just now found out that the article was canned, which is a great disappointment to me -- and, no doubt, to the organization that put the reporter in touch with me.
It did get me thinking, though, and I thought I'd ask about it here. If you've had treatment for your ED, did you have trouble getting coverage for it? What sort of treatment did your insurance company cover? Was it the full treatment your doctor recommended? Or only parts of it?
In my own case, I got much less treatment than the usual guidelines recommend. The doctor who diagnosed me basically told me that no one he'd ever seen with AN at my age had ever recovered, so he didn't break a sweat over me. I had to ask him about referring me to a dietitian, and he didn't do anything more than give me a name. For the first year, our insurance paid for it -- but then they let us know they were getting a refund from the RD, and we got slammed by a huge bill. Needless to say, I had to stop seeing the RD. (And have lost a lot of ground since then. Not surprisingly.)
That was the only treatment I've ever had for AN. Again, I was dx'd at 40, which has a lot to do with it. (I was also dx'd by someone who didn't bother to do anything beyond writing a diagnostic code on my file.)
How about the rest of you? What treatment have you had? And did your insurance cover any or it?
If enough information shows up here, I'll see if the reporter might be interested in shopping that article around again...
poster:Racer
thread:699599
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/eating/20060628/msgs/699599.html