My surgery's cancelled. Two weeks before I was due to have surgery and over three months since I scheduled It, the hospital, Cedars Sinai in Los Angeles won't accept me because I'm medicare. I wasn't going for artificial disc, either. It was supposed to be fuion with BMP and Medicare won't cover the BMP, and Cedars won't cover me. I guess it's back to the three level 360 fusion or worse.

Cerviequeen,
I posted to you elsewhere. But I would suggest appealing both the surgery to Medicare if you haven't already and appealing the hospital's decision to reject you because of your insurance. Why should you have to get a potentially less effective surgery or more invasive or whatever when you don't want? If the denials are due to money which is probably the case - the patient doesn't care about that. Utilize your right to appeal.

Cerviequeen,
I posted to you elsewhere. But I would suggest appealing both the surgery to Medicare if you haven't already and appealing the hospital's decision to reject you because of your insurance. Why should you have to get a potentially less effective surgery or more invasive or whatever when you don't want? If the denials are due to money which is probably the case - the patient doesn't care about that. Utilize your right to appeal.

Cervie,

Some spine surgeons are moving away from Cedars b/c they overcharge. I wonder if this is a factor in this say vs. UCLA or St. John's.

Best, ans

CQ,
Sorry to hear this news, I can imagine how disheartening it must be after building up surgical steam/motivation..

So it's sounding like Cedars isn't accepting Medicare and Medicare isn't approving the BMP part of the surgery? Doubled edge whammy..

I can't remember if it was Dr.Regan or Bray scheduled to perform surgery~ anyway, does the surgeon schedule elsewhere that might accept your insurance, and if so, would it just be the BMP that wouldn't be covered by Medicare?

Hopefully there are solutions to these problems vs. multilevel fusion~