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For patients who wish to undergo bariatric surgery, variation in pre-operative insurance requirements may represent inequity across insurance plan types. We conducted a cross-sectional assessment of the variation in pre-operative insurance requirements.

Original insurance policy documents for pre-operative requirements were obtained from bariatric surgery programs across the entire USA and online insurance portals. Insurance programs analyzed include commercial, Medicaid, and Medicare/TriCare plans. Poisson regression adjusting for U.S. Census region was used to evaluate variation in pre-operative requirements. Analyses were done at the insurance plan level. Our primary outcome was number of requirements required by each plan by insurance type. Our secondary outcome was number of months required to participate in medically supervised weight loss (MSWL).

Among …