One of the factors that keeps health care in the You-Benighted-States (I love that, kat!) so asininely and unnecessarily high is that it's covered by private insurance companies, and apparently large numbers of the people running these companies are concentrating too hard on trying to keep their hands in the till while they have their heads up their asses, and they miss what's really going on.

I have had two power (electric, battery operated) wheelchairs over the past nineteen years, which I use when out and about the neighborhood, shopping, or going to appointments nearby, and sometimes a bit beyond (up to 25 mile range on one battery charge, but I've never pushed it that far).

When the first set of batteries showed signs of wearing out, I called Care Medical Supplies, where I (actually, my health insurance company) bought the chair in the first place, and asked how much a new set of batteries would cost. Can't remember the exact figure, but it was in excess of $125 apiece (it takes two 12-volt deep-cycle batteries), so $250. That seemed a bit excessive to me, so I called my nephew who worked at an outfit that sold all kinds of batteries. He came over, removed the wheelchair's cowling, and looked at the batteries.

"These are the same kind of marine batteries you find in boats," he told me. "You, know, Chris-Crafts and such. They run about $80 for a pair. I can get them for you cheaper than that!" So he did.

Recently, I had to replace the batteries in my newer chair. Access to the battery compartment was a bit tricky, so I figured it would be easier to have a service technician come over from Care Medical and replace them ($60 for a service call) and I would watch him carefully to see how he got at the batteries. Besides, I learned that my health insurance company would now spring for replacement batteries in power chairs. So this time, I'd see how it was done on this new chair, and next time, maybe call my nephew.

So I got the batteries replaced. I also learned that it wasn't nearly as tricky to get at the batteries than I'd been told. Also—it was the same kind of 12-volt deep-cycle batteries. The $40 apiece variety.

Care Medical nailed my insurance company over $500 for the batteries!!

Some years back, I asked one of the service technicians from Care Medical why medical equipment costs so damned much. For example, if you take a look at a manual wheelchair, it consists of a pair of 24" wheels, a pair of smaller wheels (castors, they call them), and a frame that's really no more complicated than a bicycle frame. A standard, off-the-shelf Schwinn bicycle will run you around $150 to $200. Yet a halfway decent wheelchair will cost ten times that much! "Why?" sez I.

"Because," sez the service technician, "the outfits that make and sell medical equipment know that, more than likely, the tab is going to be picked up by some insurance company."

"But," sez I, " what if you don't have insurance?"

"Well," he sez, "then you're kind of S.O.L. The whole system is based on the idea that insurance companies have deep pockets, and more often than not, they're clueless. By the way," he concluded, "you didn't hear that from me!"

This got me checking into the actual cost of a bunch of other medical medical and orthopedic gear compared to what the patient or the insurance company is charged for it, which was a real eye-popper, but this post is already getting pretty long. Suffice it to say that the overall cost of medical care would be one helluva lot less were it not for the egregious inability of insurance companies to pay attention to what's important.

Don Firth