Medicare paying for an increasing number of 'functional' eye lifts

May 29 2013

The Center For Public Integrity: Eyelid Lifts Skyrocket Among Medicare Patients, Costing Taxpayers Millions
The public health insurance program for people over 65 typically does not cover cosmetic surgery, but for cases in which a patient's sagging eyelids significantly hinder their vision, it does pay to have them lifted. In recent years, though, a rapid rise in the number of so-called functional eyelid lifts, or blepharoplasty, has led some to question whether Medicare is letting procedures that are really cosmetic slip through the cracks -; at a cost of millions of dollars (Eaton and Donald, 5/28).