[Juli]

Has anyone submitted a pre-authorization request to their insurance on their own or have they all been submitted by U.S. Docs? I am fairly sure that I am going to have to pay for my ADR myself, but have not yet seen a U.S. Doc that has recommended it. My current doctor is saying fusion, that two level or more is not being done yet in the states, sigh.

I sent my records (acutally, Mark did via the ***) to Dr. Zeegars in Munich and Dr. Bitan in New York and Dr. Zeegars called me and emailed me the next business day. He said at first look I will probably need my L3-L4 done and possibly one more but he will not know for sure until he does the test. This surprised me as my L4-L5 and L5-S1 look much worse to my uneducated eyes. He also said it is possible another procedure can be done to resolve the problem if the L3/L4 is the only one causing the problem. He said I did not look like a good candidate for fusion, some people are actually good candidates for that process, he says.
I have not heard from Dr. Bitan yet but it has only been a few days.

My thought is to travel to Munich and just have the tests done and then submit that diagnosis to my insurance company and see how it goes from there. I thought if I had a clear and specific procedure that it would be easier to argue the case. ( I can dream right?)

I did call my insurance company UHC, and they said that I can have surgery overseas, but I would have be at the out of network rate, of course.

Does anyone have any experience with this specific process or any other suggestions?

Thanks, as always, for the great forum!