Fortunately not everybody has to deal with this stuff, but there are some fairly big ticket items among medical and orthopedic equipment.

Wheelchairs, for example, seem to me to be grossly overpriced. You can buy a pretty darned flashy bicycle for well under $1,000, but if you need a wheelchair with some fairly simple options such as removable arm rests to facilitate transfers, or adjustable foot rests, you're looking at around $2,000 or more. And for the life of me, I can't see that there is that much difference between manufacturing a bicycle and a wheelchair:   some bent or welded tubing, a couple of wheels, a simple device for braking or locking the wheels, and someplace to plant your butt.

I've had two electric wheelchairs during the past fifteen years, both of which, fortunately, were paid for (mostly) by my health insurance company. The first was around $6,500 (more than I paid for my first car, which I bought new in 1968), and the second was close to $9,000.

Some years ago, a repairman from Care Medical came over to my apartment to do some repairs on the first electric wheelchair, and we got to talking about prices of orthopedic equipment. He asked me what I (my insurance company) had paid for the power chair, and I told him. He snorted. "When you consider that there is not that much difference between what goes into this power chair and a golf cart, and that you could buy a golf cart for about half what this cost, it makes you wonder. But when they price these things, it's not on the basis of what it cost to make. They figure, 'some insurance company is going to pay for it,' and they jack the prices up accordingly. Pricing on anything medical operates the same way."

And about every three years (depending on how much you use it) you have to have the batteries replace to avoid finding yourself in a "no go" situation in the local Safeway. If you get the batteries (two 12-volt deep cycle) from a medical equipment place, they run a couple hundred dollars, plus $60 for a house-call. I get mine from Budget Batteries for about fifty or sixty bucks a pair, and my brother-in-law installs them for me for a couple of beers.

One surprise, though. Until I was 19, I used standard wooden underarm crutches. Then I got a pair of aluminum forearm crutches (they called them "Canadian crutches" at the time). They were $25 a pair. A few years ago, I found out that they were running around $150 to $200 a pair. Two pieces of aluminum tubing, bent toward the upper end, with a couple of handgrips and metal cuffs attached. Simple device. I don't see what justified that big a price jump. But just now, I checked on a couple of orthopedic equipment sites and found that they can now be had for around $40 to $60 a pair. That's more like it.

Ever wonder why health insurance rates keep going up? Nah! I think everyone has a pretty good idea why.

Now, about those health insurance premiums. . . .

Don Firth