I’m old now. My tits sag nearly down to my knees. I breast-fed four kids (which tits are made for) but I am long past feeding anything.
Bras cost money. GOOD bras cost a fortune. And they’re always uncomfortable, regardless of how much you paid. Plus they add weight to my BMI, which pisses me off even more!
I vote for elective mastectomies!
They are.
You just have to find a surgeon willing to do it and the money to pay for it.
Unlike Ms Jolie, I don’t have any markers for potential breast-cancer. I just want one for economic and aesthetic reasons. 
My sister’s friend got hers reduced because they were giving her too much back pain. Her reduction worked out well for her. I can’t recall if her insurance covered it or if it was elective surgery.
I realize you live in a country with better medical care than most of us here. But I bet the price of a breast reduction / removal is many, many times greater than the price of a lifetime supply of good bras. So your economic argument stands on you paying for bras and somebody else paying for surgeries.
But yeah, breast reductions are totally common elective cosmetic surgeries. Either to remove aged implants or simply reducing Nature’s excessive bounty. And I suppose that as a woman ages, the amount of weight her back can happily offset will decrease. So reductions for essentially geriatric reasons sounds totally reasonable.
Around here, we aren’t quite as allergic to this concept as in your country. But you probably know that.
Elective breast reduction/removal is plastic surgery. It’s not considered medical care, but cosmetic. You can absolutely pay a plastic surgeon to do it. I know people who’ve had cosmetic breast reduction.
Medical reasons for removing breasts include cancer and a high risk of cancer, gender dysphoria, and probably other stuff. But “i don’t enjoy wearing bras” isn’t really a medical complaint. You could just let them sag and bounce.
Warning: my sil lost sensation in one nipple when she had major breast reduction. Surgery carries risks, both obvious and less obvious.
Indeed.
As I meant to acknowledge with this bit:
but may not have made the point as explicit as I intended. Yes, the USA’s attitude is utterly primitive and stupid, while Oz, and pretty much the rest of the at least modestly economically advanced world, has the right idea.
But it remains the case that the medical establishment could solve the OP’s health problem more economically by buying her bras for life than by slicing off her parts.
It’s not just the money though, but the discomfort, and potential for causing other health problems.
I was surprised to google and find that few countries cover breast reduction under general UHC. My country (UK) is among those that does though.
Canada (at least Ontario does) for other than cosmetic reasons. My almost 18 year old daughter is considering it due to back pain.
Perhaps if LSLGuy had said “somebody else paying for elective, cosmetic surgeries” it might have changed your response.
But in any case, it sounds like OP might stand a decent chance of persuading a doctor that she is having back pain (or some other pain) from her breasts, and have them reduced for cause, which could be covered by her insurance (or Medicare, if appropriate). I don’t know about complete removal, but perhaps that wouldn’t be required to resolve her issues.
The OP is Australian. What their health systems do and don’t pay for is according to their standards, not US default-selfish brands of thinking.
I would hope their standards are enlightened enough to include paying for therapeutic breast reductions. And other therapeutic interventions that also happen to have cosmetic side-benefits.
Going by the OP’s description, I’m not seeing anything that qualifies this procedure as therapeutic in her case. Breast sag, uncomfortable and/or expensive bras, and an effect on her BMI calculations, are what she mentioned.
I think an apt analog for males as far as the “who pays” question goes is circumcision. Yeah, I know it’s a far simpler procedure, but if a health care system pays for a circumcision, it should also pay for breast reduction in most cases.
Are breast reductions not a thing in Australia, or is the OP describing something different? Breast reductions, in my experience, are reasonably common, for certain values of “common” around here. I know at least two individuals who have had one because of back problems, and there’s a number of celebrities that have had one. I remember hearing when Drew Barrymore and Soleil Moon Frye had surgery when I was in high school.
The OP says
and a mastectomy is not breast reduction. It’s removing the breast (s) altogether.
The OPs reasons for wanting this do not include any medical reasons for either a masectomy or a reduction. She says good bras are expensive and still uncomfortable. Plus her BMI would be better if she didn’t have the weight of her breasts. Not that she is in pain, or has back problems or even that she has the gene that significantly increases the chances of developing breast cancer. I can’t imagine any form of universal health care covering surgery that is purely cosmetic - which is what the OP is talking about. It won’t relieve pain, it’s not reconstructive. She just doesn’t want to buy and wear bras that are uncomfortable even though they’re expensive. And wants to lower her BMI in a way that doesn’t make a difference ( you won’t suddenly become healthier because you had your breasts sliced off.)
As a person who had cancer-based mastectomies, could we not use the word “sliced”? It’s viscerally disgusting to me (literally–it’s nauseating), and trivializes what for the vast majority of women experiencing it for medical reasons, is a multi-hour surgery associated with a likely fatal condition, and the side effects of that surgery, including not just fear, but pain, persist for many years. “Sliced” is language that makes light of a life-changing intervention.
If “sliced” is being used in reference to the OP’s question about elective surgery, it’s both dismissive and violent imagery and unnecessary to the discussion.
Thanks.
Which also points out that the OP’s proposal probably has far greater medical drawbacks than she probably yet recognizes. It’s BIG surgery.
In an era where one of the largest goals of surgical technique for most purposes is to minimize what gets cut into on the way to the site of repair, then also to minimize the size of what gets removed or re-arranged or whatever curative technique is appropriate to the bare minimum necessary.
Sorry, I didn’t realize
No worries. I said something because people often don’t notice.