For everyone who has complained about the lack of insurance
reimbursement for facial lipoatrophy treatment, or about the lack of
good permanent fillers approved for facial lipoatrophy, now is your
chance to do something. Please follow the link below
to submit a comment in response to Mediare’s request for comments on
Reconstructive Treatment for Facial Lipodystrophy Syndrome. Even if
you have private insurance, private insurers are likely to follow the
lead of Medicare, the country’s largest health program. Manufacturers
of facial fillers are more likely to seek FDA approval if there is a
potential for insurance reimbursement for their products. This is
probably the best opportunity we’ve ever had to do something about
insurance reimbursement for facial wasting procedures. With a new,
more enlightened administration in the White House, I think there’s a
good chance that Medicare will change its policies in response to
reasonable arguments that treatment for facial wasting is
reconstructive (like reconstruction of a breast after breast cancer or
like surgery to eliminate disfiguring burn scars).
Powerful personal anecdotes about how facial wasting has affected you
are likely to be persuasive, particularly if you can talk about how it
has caused social isolation or impaired your ability to work. Pictures
will speak louder than words; if you have pictures of your face
before and after treatment for facial wasting, posting them with your
comments could help the cause enormousely. There is an email link on
the form for attachments.
If you choose to write personal anecdotes or submit pictures, the
government will redact (delete) anything you write about your personal
experience with facial lipoatrophy from the comments posted on the
website, and will not post personal photos (before you can comment,
you are required to read a statement from the government stating that
statements about personal health conditions will not be posted on the
website). But presumably, these comments (and photos) will still reach
the intended decision makers in the government in their unredacted
form. I personally chose to begin with a paragraph that stated my
opinion about the proposed change to policy and then discussed my
experience from working with people with HIV. Presumably, these
comments will be posted on the website. Then I went on to describe my
personal experience with facial lipoatrophy, providing a couple of
anecdotes that I thought demonstrated the effect it has had on me. I
presume these comments will not be posted, although I don’t really
mind if they are.
Please click on the orange “comment” button to explain to Medicare why you think facial lipoatrophy is a medication-induced side effect that needs to be treated and covered. If you can add your own personal experience as a patient or as a clinician, even better!
We do not have much time. The deadline is Feb 16
https://www.cms.hhs.gov/mcd/ncpc_view_document.asp?id=20
For more information about facial reconstruction products in HIV, please visit facialwasting.org