The IBOT is Dead!

[IKE]

I worked for a mobility company (wheelchair accessable vehicles) as my first internship (The Braun Corporation). It was founded by the owner that had personal mobility issues.
While there the most important lesson I saw was sometimes you have to walk in anothers shoes before you can understand. I would ask that members of congress that are going to write policy on what get covered try the alternatives for 2-3 days. The owner of the company I worked at asked another young engineer to pretend for 1 week that his legs were paralized and to use their vehicles and a wheelchair. He gave up after 2 days, and the owner was OK with that because in the two days he had experienced what it was like.

This saddens me because the wrong problem was solved with this resolution. The problem was that the device was too expensive for insurance/government to afford. Their solution was to not cover it. The real solution should have looked into what it takes to get the iBOT from $22K to $10K. I am sure the makers knew what the required volume would be.

This spells bad knews for the Luke Arm. An interesting protest would be to see a march with persons with their arms tied requesting that Congress do the same for a day or two before legislating life changing device...