The Boston Globe reports that "one of Boston's top teaching hospitals is evaluating dozens of overweight teenagers for stomach-reduction surgery," and that one of Massachusetts' health insurance companies has decided to cover the costs of such surgeries for adolescents.
These shifts in policy, according to the Globe, suggest that stomach stapling surgery increasingly is becoming a mainstream option - even for children.
These shifts in policy, according to the Globe, suggest that stomach stapling surgery increasingly is becoming a mainstream option - even for children.
- KC's View:
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We think this is an enormous mistake, because at a very early age it suggests to kids that if they can't control their impulses, there is in fact a magic bullet that relieves them of responsibility.
We had a nice piece on this same trend over on SupermarketGuru.com over a month ago, and Phil Lempert even conducted a survey of consumers on the subject.
Three quarters of respondents told SG.com that they believed stomach stapling should be "last resort" surgery, and two-thirds said they couldn't even imagine having such surgery - despite the fact that almost nine out of 10 of respondents said that they want to lose weight (and two thirds said that they wanted to lose 25 pounds or more).
Go figure. Consumer common sense may be exceeding that of the medical establishment.
