Letter: University won't cover weight loss programs

Editor,

The article on the front page of the June 8-14 issue, "UNM to Win by Losing," struck me as ironic and absurd - pathetic really - since UNM's Human Resources Department has specifically excluded any health coverage of weight loss programs in their contract with United Health Care.

After 30 years of trying to encourage my husband to enroll in a weight loss program, our doctor convinced him and gave him a referral to an Albuquerque endocrinologist who runs a weight loss program. But a call to United Health Care informed us that UNM had specifically written an exclusion to cover any and all such programs.

So in the same week that I see an article seeming to encourage staff to work for a healthy weight goal, I get the news that even a medical referral will not get us any real help, and that our families get no consideration whatsoever.

Hue Walker Bumgarner-Kirby

UNM staff