Jill’s POV

Speaker: Jill 

Hi, my name is Jill. I am 58 years old and retired. I live in Wisconsin and have been using anti-obesity medication for about a year and a half now.  

Please describe how obesity has impacted your or your loved one’s health and well-being. 

I’ve struggled with obesity all of my life and I was a little kid and I was well overweight than all of my friends. And this just carried on through life. Then I started teenage years up and down with my weight crashed and diets and things like that. And, after I had my kids and got older, it just got worse and worse until I, I had a BMI of like 33-34, something like that. I actually had bariatric surgery, lost a lot of weight, never made it quite to a normal BMI, but then the weight just started, piling on. That had affected a lot of aspects of my health over the years. Achy joints and stuff and I had, plaque build up in my heart, my arteries, I should say because I had, high cholesterol and they were unable to manage my high cholesterol because, I wasn’t able to take any of the medications. So, I just saw my health declining and was getting really worried that I was gonna die young like my, both of my parents actually did, and they were both overweight, and I wanted to do something about it.  

Tell us why you think health insurance should cover obesity care. 

Why should health insurance cover anti-obesity medications? Well, that’s pretty simple. People that are overweight have a lot of health conditions that come up, that people that are not overweight, do not.  In my opinion, obesity is a disease. It’s something I was born with and it’s something that carried on throughout my life. And no matter how hard I tried, I could not overcome it, especially for any length of time. 

Other things that it’s done for me is mental health. I was having really bad problems with my mental health and the fact that I’ve lost weight and I feel that I fit in more with society, and I can do more has really helped with that a lot, you know. So, the bottom line is, is that in the end, even though the anti-obesity medications do cost money, they save a lot of money for the health care organizations if they would just cover it. 

So, I really think they should cover the medications more freely. And, you know, I hear that Medicare and Medicaid are not covering it. I think they should, you know, I think that all needs to be relooked at, you know, and I think the more that people like me show that these drugs are very successful in helping you lose and maintain that loss, you know, they will see the benefit to it and more will get on board with covering it.