Warning-- sorry for the lengthy post, but this is my .02 on my Kaiser experience:
Kaiser is laid back about covering it, but please know that you get what you pay for. Because they are laid back about covering it, you are walking into a factory. The surgeon is going to have WAY too many cases to really care about you like another surgeon outside of Kaiser will. The sheer volume of people they handle really does not allow them to give you the same care you will get at other places, IMO. That doesn't mean they don't have great surgeons. Also doesn't mean they don't have crappy surgeons.
I was done at Kaiser in NorCal and it was a total failure to where I am left with a MUCH worse bite than what I went in to fix and now I need a more complex and complicated revision to fix the things they really messed up. I liked my surgeon. She was a nice lady. BUT, as soon as the crap hit the fan with this, all of the sudden I didn't get the time of day from her. She wouldn't even grant my request for an appointment to examine me and see what else was wrong and what had to be fixed. I basically got hung out to dry and now I am forced to find another surgeon to fix me and I'm looking to be $30-70K out of pocket for it. So far a few of the consults I've went on have showed me night and day what the experience is like with other surgeons compared to Kaiser. I never got more than 15 minutes with my surgeon, and most of the time it was her residents and not her. I only had two appointments before my surgery-- one super quick initial consult, and the other two weeks pre op. You do not get measurements taken, or shown tracings, projections, or any part of your plan at all. I asked multiple times for expected movements on my face, and all I got was "well, we're going to move you a smidge here, a little here, and do this and wah-la, you'll be good to go." I just kept on with that because I had faith in my surgeon (and my ortho who highly recommended her) and figured this is how she's done it hundreds if not thousands of times, so it will be OK.
The other surgeons I've seen for revision consults.... well, so far they are amazing and it's like night and day. Some of them have seen me for hours, taken all sorts of measurements, scans, etc, and have already done mock surgeries to tell me what needs to go where to correct all of Kaiser's mistakes. It made me sad to realize how many corners Kaiser cut when I saw what care I could have been getting elsewhere. Again, is that because my surgeon is a bad surgeon, or is it because she is just a part of the Kaiser factory getting handed way too many patients and this is the way she has to do business? Maybe both? I don't know. I know there are other people like me who came out like this from Kaiser, but they do a good job at putting a lid on people when stuff goes wrong, so you don't hear about it too often. I didn't in all of my pre op research on them.
So, I will say this from my experience-- you get what you pay for. This doesn't mean you don't have a chance to come out with a good result. I know people who have come out just fine from Kaiser. But, I feel like it's a greater roll of the dice with them with the way their system is set up and how patients just don't get the time/care they would get from other surgeons. Leaves greater room for catastrophic error like my case, and if you're lucky enough to avoid that, then greater room to not achieve the perfection you might have gotten elsewhere. Best advice I can give to people is go on other consults. See what other surgeons are like before heading in to Kaiser. At least you'll have that to compare before walking in to the factory with blind faith. If you're in NorCal close to the Bay Area, there are a TON of great surgeons here. Check out the maxfac department at UCSF, Kasey Li at Palo Alto, and another great lesser named surgeon I have consulted with is in the East Bay named Nestor Karas. There is always Dr. Relle and Dr. Arnette and Gunson down in SoCal too. There are definitely great choices out here and doesn't hurt to go on consults.
