A few years back, I sat in my manual wheelchair the in hallway of our apartment and watched while a repairman from Care Medical Equipment Co. installed new batteries in my electric-powered wheelchair. The new batteries (2) were priced at $240.00 apiece. I asked the repairman why batteries for powered wheelchairs cost so much;   much more than automobile batteries. He answered me quite frankly, "Anything related to medical equipment is hugely overpriced. The manufacturers and the retailers of medical and orthopedic equipment figure that it's going to be paid for by some medical insurance company anyway."

My niece's husband, Tim, got a job in which one of his duties was working with and installing batteries. I asked him about different kinds of batteries. He looked at the ones in my power chair and told me, "Those are just standard 12-volt deep-cycle marine batteries." When I told him what I had been charged for them, he just about keeled over.

The next time I needed to replace the batteries, I called Tim. He picked up a pair and installed them for me. $50.00 for the pair. He got them for me wholesale, but even if I'd had to pay full retail price, it would have been less that a quarter of what I'd paid Care Medical.

They worked just fine. Same batteries. Different labels.

Don Firth