anders_CPH said:

Denials are usually procedural rather than clinical, and the order that works reflects that.

Thank you — that is the clearest version of this I have read, and I have read a lot of them. Adding it to my notes with a link back to this thread.

Adding the clinical framing, because it changes how the question reads. The honest answer is that the effect is real, the magnitude is contested, and the individual variation is larger than either. Those three things can all be true at once, and most arguments here are two people holding different parts of that.

Ask again with the specifics and you will get a better answer than this one.

anna.melb_AU said:

Important PSA about surgery and anaesthesia and anesthesia: GLP-1 agonists delay gastric emptying, which increases aspiration risk during procedures…

I read this differently from anna.melb_AU, on substance rather than tone. The affordability discussion here usually stops at individual tactics. At list price this class is out of reach for most of the people who would benefit, and no amount of appeal strategy changes that — it is a pricing problem wearing a paperwork costume.

Adding the numbers, since they settle part of this. One practical note: write down what you did and when, before you need it. Reconstructing a timeline from memory three months later is how people end up unable to answer the one question that would have resolved it.

Correct me if the detail matters more than I have assumed.

Moderator note: good thread. Keeping it here rather than moving it, because the question is general enough to be useful.