Some ob-gyns in South Florida turn away overweight women

<http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/2011-05-16/health/fl-hk-no-obesity-doc-20110516_1_gyn-ob-gyn-obese-patients>

"In a nation with 93 million obese people, a few ob-gyn doctors in South Florida now refuse to see otherwise healthy women solely because they are overweight.


Fifteen obstetrics-gynecology practices out of 105 polled by the Sun Sentinel said they have set weight cut-offs for new patients starting at 200 pounds or based on measures of obesity — and turn down women who are heavier.


Some of the doctors said the main reason was their exam tables or other equipment can't handle people over a certain weight. But at least six said they were trying to avoid obese patients because they have a higher risk of complications."

Discrimination.

I hope that they don't accept Medicare or Medicaid as funding sources.

It's not the tables. They will hold a horse. It is strictly weeding out potentially high risk patients.

Health care for all...indeed.:mad:

Ob-gyns pay such high malpractice insurance fees, it's mind-boggling.

So this makes me wonder - are insurance companies giving doctors who limit their patients to 200 pounds or less, giving them a break on the insurance fees?

I might get flamed for this, but it's true that overweight and obese patients as a whole have a higher rate of complications from surgery and more health problems in general. You can always find exceptions to this when you look at an individual or two, but taken as a whole, the statistics paint a picture that obesity isn't good for our health in general.

Now, if something goes wrong, even if it's not the doctor's fault, the doctor will often get sued. And insurance companies end up paying for that. Maybe the insurance companies are offering a cut rate insurance to doctors if they put weight limits on their patients.

I really have to wonder, is that 200 lbs. when pregnant or when not pregnant? Because I could easily see a woman topping 200 lbs. if she's somewhat tall, pregnant, and maybe a little overweight to start with.

insurance companies pressuring the doctors. If so, then we will for sure see asthma patients being denied care, people with cardiac disease, etc. It's not a good situation at all.

I was just wondering why all of a sudden a large group of doctors from different practices, all decided at the same time to deny care to patients. I'm betting there is a precipitating event and my guess would be it has something to do with insurance rates. I'd be really curious to see if that's the case or not.

on top of it I recently had Guillain-Barre Syndrome hit. Doesn't matter that I got the kidney disease because a doctor made a mistake in the medicine he prescribed to me and didn't monitor me properly and I didn't know enough to realize I was in danger. Doesn't matter that the GBS wasn't my fault either, no one knows why the disease strikes some people and not others. Autoimmune diseases are a real mystery to the medical community.

Pre-existing conditions, remember?

I don't need a sarcasm or irony thingie, do I?

And yes, auto-immune disorders are quite strange and mysterious, and some are simply worse than others. My two sons both have alopecia areata, which is auto-immune, causes hair loss, and is otherwise quite benign. But because of them I tend to pay a lot of attention to all the other auto-immune things.

don't need the sarcasm thingee, LOL. I just mean, all of us, whether fat or thin, need to be concerned about this because all of us are vulnerable to being denied care. Nearly all of us, if we live long enough, will have one condition or another that makes us a risk, but that doesn't mean we don't still need medical care.

alopecia areata is by far the most benign. You lose all your hair. And while I would not be very happy to lose all mine, there seem to be no other health consequences. If anything, people with alopecia often report being healthier than others, and that has absolutely been true of my sons. They almost never get colds, did both get chicken pox and the younger one has had a bout of shingles at a very young age. Older one got flu this past winter. And that's about it. Older one is 28, younger one 24, and they lost their hair at ages 4 and 10 respectively.

Every other auto immune disease ranges from bad to worse: type I diabetes, scleraderma, Crohn's disease, lupus. There are others, also.

And there's the rub: overweight is a marker for a metric ton of other health problems (and, incidentally, is itself a health problem) so it's much more difficult to tell if a patient is "otherwise healthy" or not.

The women are going to the doctor; that is a GOOD thing. They want care, they should get care.