NSW to fund weight loss surgery

[visitor1]

THE NSW government will pay for weight-loss surgery for morbidly obese people in a radical attempt to slash the $7 billion burden of obesity in NSW.
Fairfax says more than 8000 lap-banding surgeries are conducted in Australia each year, but 95 per cent are done in private hospitals.

It says a policy to fund such operations in public hospitals will be unveiled tomorrow as part of a strategy aimed at the 51.7 per cent of adults who are overweight or obese.

Health Minister Reba Meagher is also expected to announce the establishment of one-stop clinics to tackle obesity-related conditions such as diabetes, kidney failure and heart disease.

Patients with a body mass index of 30 or more can be referred by their GP to the clinics, which will have access to specialist physicians, diabetes nurses, dietitians, psychologists and exercise physiologists.

At least 1.13 million people in NSW are obese, with that number predicted to grow by about 15,000 people a year.

Professor of human nutrition at the University of Sydney Ian Caterson said this kind of multi-disciplinary approach is needed if the state is going to beat the obesity epidemic.

"We don't have anything that's logical and connected, and to tackle obesity you need to be able to go somewhere which has all the modern treatments, and that includes bariatric surgery," said Professor Caterson, who is among the public health experts drafted into the university's new Centre for Physical Activity, Nutrition and Obesity Research.

The experts will advise Ms Meagher on how to reverse our expanding waistlines, including reducing childhood obesity rates to 22 per cent by 2016.

Lap-banding involves keyhole surgery to insert a band around the top of the stomach, so patients eat less. It is considered a relatively safe and cost-effective way to reduce obesity-related conditions such as heart disease, diabetes and cancer.

A Monash University study found obese patients who had gastric bands fitted were five times more likely to be free of diabetes than patients trying diet and exercise.

But the potentially life-saving option has been largely out of reach for those without private health insurance or able to pay $10,000.

Thought this was interesting....now if only i was still in NSW!
It seems surgery is becoming more common as is the obese population. Speaking from some one who is a huge fat @ss its good to see some help being granted.

[Neenee Jellybeanie]

The waiting list in public hospitals for elective surgery is long already, how will public hospitals cope with this?

I think this is a great initiative but it's not a complete solution. Instead of funding surgery, why doesn't the government fund personal trainers first? Or make access to dieticians easier? (I saw a dietician as a teenager in a public hospital but I don't know if that's available in all states or if it's available at all for people over 18).

[BellyBelly]

Just a side comment - its amazing how governments are so happily and easily granting this sort of stuff when they have so much trouble trying to ease our overloaded maternity systems without funding private midwives, saving many thousands of dollars - they could do many more of these surgeries if they did. Private midwife = $4 approx. Hospital = $13-24k.

[C~Q]

I'm sorry but I think this is another way of turning us in to a nation of people absolved of all responsibility for their actions. I agree with babysocks, fund PT's and Dieticians, have free "boot camp" type situations or even government funded gyms.

When I heard that Australia had taken over America and we are now the most overweight nation in the world I couldn't believe it and it's happening to more and more children as well. What sort of message are we sending to our children? "It doesn't matter if you don't eat right and exercise, you can always have surgery"

I was told on my course that Drs aren't calling Type 2 Diabetes "Adult onset Diabetes" anymore as more and more children are diagnosed with it.

[thepixie]

When I heard that Australia had taken over America and we are now the most overweight nation in the world I couldn't believe it and it's happening to more and more children as well.

The survey which was promoted in the media as showing that Australia has higher rates of obesity than America was actually hopelessly flawed. It was based on people aged 45-60 who presented for free blood pressure testing. As high blood pressure is often associated with obesity the sample were self-selecting to be overweight or obese. The scientific validity of this study across the whole population of Australia was effectively nil.

[/QUOTE]What sort of message are we sending to our children? "It doesn't matter if you don't eat right and exercise, you can always have surgery"
[/QUOTE]

We are sending some very twisted messages to our children. We are teaching them that all that matters is how you look. As long as you look like some emaciated waif on the cover of a magazine who probably lives on cocaine and cigarettes, well that's fine. People can be active and eat healthy and still be on the heavy side. But we promote this Kate Moss ideal like it's healthy. If we want people to be healthy we should stop focusing on how they look and promote healthy eating and exercise. We should stop judging people by BMI (a worthless measure) and start judging ourselves on how healthy we are.

Is the government going to fund treatment for anorexia? because all this focus on body size especially in young people is likely to start an epidemic. And anorexia is a deadly mental illness with a mortality rate of 20% affecting young women almost exclusively.

I sympathise with those who feel they need this surgery but I agree with Kelly that it's far from what should be the government's first priority.

[C~Q]

We are sending some very twisted messages to our children. We are teaching them that all that matters is how you look. As long as you look like some emaciated waif on the cover of a magazine who probably lives on cocaine and cigarettes, well that's fine. People can be active and eat healthy and still be on the heavy side. But we promote this Kate Moss ideal like it's healthy. If we want people to be healthy we should stop focusing on how they look and promote healthy eating and exercise. We should stop judging people by BMI (a worthless measure) and start judging ourselves on how healthy we are.

Are you talking about the subject at hand or are you talking about the media/Aus as a whole when you say "We"?

Of course people can be on the heavy side and still be healthy, but those aren't the people that are getting the surgery. And there is no way that you can tell me that someone who is classed as able to get the surgery is "healthy". No one is saying you either have to look like Kate Moss or be Obese.

As for BMI, it is not worthless. It's a screening tool used in conjunction with other tests to give you an IDEA of somebodies body composition. It is in no way totally acurate and it will overestimate body fat in someone who is very muscualar and underestimate body fat in older people who have lost muscle mass.

I don't believe that any Dr/fitness instructor etc uses BMI alone.

What we need to be teaching, and by that I mean showing by example, our children is how to eat a healthy, balanced diet and how to exercise and have fun. If you have a parent who drags themselves to the gym and moans about it then you're teaching that exercise is boring. If more familes get outside, go to the park, go on bikerides etc together then we could be solving all the problems in one go.

[thepixie]

The article says "Patients with a body mass index of 30 or more can be referred by their GP to the clinics, which will have access to specialist physicians, diabetes nurses, dietitians, psychologists and exercise physiologists."
So BMI is going to be used as a threshold criterion for evaluating who is eligible for surgery.I took this to suggest it was being used as a measure of public health and for that purpose I think it is pretty flawed. Easy to measure across large populations perhaps, but flawed nonetheless. I think that might be how we detoured into a discussion of BMI.... woops.
And RachelM you're right, the nutritional value of many people's diet is just scary. But is the right solution to that to use government money to surgically modify people so they don't show the physical effects of the terrible diet? There's got to be a better way.