Plastic Surgery Essay

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Plastic Surgery and the Impact it has on Today's Society Plastic surgery’s possibilities are limitless and have been a booming business for the past two decades. Every year there are new, safer, and more types of treatments and more people willing to experience them. In Beauty Junkies, Dr. Gerald Imber, who has been a proponent of doing small procedures from as early as age 35 says, “Everybody talks about it like it’s going to the gym. That philosophy has pervaded society.” In today’s society, having plastic surgery is a popular thing to do and it has come to mean different things to different individuals. Some are hoping for normalcy while others want to gain back their youthful, sexy look. Plastic surgery is a “medical specialty involved with changing a person’s appearance via surgery.” (Wood, 2005). There are two types of plastic surgery; cosmetic (surgical and non-surgical) and reconstructive. Cosmetic surgery is done for the purpose of improving appearance while reconstructive surgery corrects or repairs a defect or injury (American Society of Plastic Surgeons, 2011). The American healthcare system has changed drastically over the past 60 years and this change has allowed the medical field of plastic surgery to grow even faster. Because of insurance issues in some medical fields, there are a number of doctors abandoning their original medical practice and turning to the plastic surgery field since most of the patient are paying out-of-pocket for their procedures eliminating the “red tape” of insurance companies (Kuczynski, 2006). Cosmetic surgeries usually are not covered by insurance because these are considered elective, meaning the patient is to have surgery by choice, thus the patient pays for these procedures. Reconstructive surgery, on the other hand, has a better chance at being covered by insurance, although the purpose for the surgery is the

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