Rules, regulations, gatekeepers and conserving resources seem to be the guide on the road to obtaining a funded power wheelchair these days. Like most roads the potholes are numerous and deep.
Aside from those who believe that funders (Medicare, Medicaid, insurers) have overly restrictive criteria for obtaining a wheelchair, there is a large number of people who support the existing dollar based solutions.
A recent article fueled by the demise of giant Johnson & Johonson’s iBot wheelchair went on to touch on this issue. Some of the comments from that article are found below:
But today’s emphasis is to expand access to health care rather than provide pricier improvements, cautions University of Michigan business professor Erik Gordon. To a certain extent, there are breakthroughs we just can’t afford,” Gordon says.
Giving people independence and access and freedom and technology ought to be something we do,
Dean Kamen
Medicare routinely pays tens of thousands of dollars for hip replacements to keep the elderly walking pain-free. But a 70-year-old who can’t undergo that operation must become too impaired to easily care for herself at home before being approved for a basic electric wheelchair when short stands in the kitchen are less of an issue than going to the grocery store,… The wheelchair is maybe the most enabling technology in medicine, period. What it is, is discriminatory policy.
Dr. Michael Boninger
University of Pittsburgh Medical Center
Dr. Bonninger is an old friend who has spent most of his professional years advancing wheelchair technology and applying these technologies into the mainstream. He puts it on the money with “The wheelchair is maybe the most enabling technology in medicine, period.”
I, like Dr. Bonninger, believe this to be true and believe that the measuring stick used in determining who shall receive a funded wheelchair should not have dollar increments marked on it. Rather it should be marked with the benefits realized to the individual user, to the community and society, and lastly to the keepers of the public bankroll. If it’s good for people and our society then it’s a good thing to do regardless of cost.
Read the article at:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/feedarticle/8526997
