About Us: The Coverlipedema Story
Our healthcare system is profit driven, and decisions are often made based on costs rather than quality and outcomes. To overcome this, Coverlipedema.com believes that every patient should be empowered to take control of their healthcare. Our mission is to teach patients lifelong skills and knowledge that they can use to get care for themselves and their loved ones. Physicians are natural advocates for patients as well, but they also are frustrated by the insurance system. We created Coverlipedema.com to give patients and physicians a platform to work together efficiently and effectively to address insurance coverage issues.
We are not a law firm. We are patient advocates who have created a web-based service that has enabled lipedema surgery coverage of over $15 million for almost 300 women. We have legal, medical, patient advocacy, and media and marketing experience, and we work with some of the best lipedema surgeons in the country. Our success comes from a collection of effective strategies and exclusive documents based on our experience and the latest medical research that enable our members to make compelling arguments for prior authorization, denial appeals, network exceptions, and fair payment.
We are driven by our personal experience with lipedema and the belief that lipedema is a disease for which treatment should be covered by insurance. We created Coverlipedema.com to make this process accessible and affordable by leveraging the web to widely offer the means to obtain coverage starting at $500. Before Coverlipedema.com, our fees for personal services ranged from $3,000 to $6,000 per case, and we could only handle a limited number of clients. We can now get more women covered in less time for a lower cost.
We are independent. We do not represent any insurance plans. We do not represent any physicians. We will not try to sell you an insurance plan or refer you to surgeons for our benefit. However, we will tell you about our experiences with both regarding insurance coverage for lipedema. There is so much misinformation about lipedema surgery, and we are committed to educating patients about getting covered fairly and safely.
In our years of working on lipedema coverage on a national level, we have developed relationships with decision-makers at insurance companies, independent review companies, and state and federal agencies. We often leverage these relationships to ensure that our Members get the attention that they deserve. We have a unique collection of coverage determinations, paid claims, and single-case agreements between surgeons and insurance plans that can make the difference in getting covered or winning an appeal.
We are passionate about our mission. Our advocacy is enthusiastic and fueled by the moral imperative that lipedema surgery is a right, not just a privilege for those who can afford it. Our methods are sometimes unorthodox, and we have been accused of not always being very nice. But our results speak for themselves. We are willing to put ourselves on the line for women who should have their lipedema surgery covered by insurance but who have been denied their right to medically necessary treatment for questionable and, frankly, unethical reasons for years. We have no patience for insurance companies, surgeons, or others who take advantage of the lipedema community.
Our ultimate mission is to promote the legal basis for safe and effective liposuction nationwide. Through our advocacy efforts in ensuring safe and effective lipedema surgery with board-certified plastic surgeons in facilities appropriate to and following the guidelines of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, we work to create laws on the local, state, and national level that echo the State of New York Liposuction regulations. We parallel those efforts to ensure that insurance companies are aware of the highest standards of liposuction practice and that they only allow qualified surgeons to perform any procedures that they would cover. Any criticism that we may make regarding the qualifications and suitability of any physician is based on our desire to make liposuction safer by raising the standards of surgeons who are allowed to perform it. Any criticism that we may make regarding the location of the performance of liposuction is based on our desire to promote the safest location for liposuction. Likewise, any criticism that we may make of liposuction techniques, as well as pre- and post-operative practices is based on our desire to see the legal basis of safe liposuction enshrined in law. We are inspired by the deaths of women who have been killed by untrained and unsafe doctors who have taken advantage of lax rules to perform surgery that they are not qualified to perform. Our efforts are prompted by the deaths of those women and our desire that an unqualified doctor should never be allowed to perform liposuction.
Coverlipedema.com is proud to be a part of helping women regain their function, reduce their pain, and live fulfilling lives.
This page was updated on 2 January 2022