In an article posted by Ezra Klein last Thursday on Washington Post’s Wonkblog, the writer laments about the financial and otherwise pains of renting the Invacare Perfecto2 through his traditional insurance plan. Wishes he could buy it outright from ActiveForever!
He was diagnosed as needing oxygen therapy when he sleeps. But that’s not the worst part of the ordeal. The worst part occurs when he receives his bill and is monthly reminded of how much money he is being forced to waste. His insurance does not provide him the more affordable option of purchasing the equipment.
He writes:
For the same oxygen concentrator that I would be able to buy online for around $700 (my particular model is the Invacare Perfecto2 – available online with free shipping from ActiveForever for $706.30 as of this afternoon), Apria charges $137.13 per month – I am charged a copay of 20%, or $27.42. So far, over the past 7 years, they’ve gotten well over $10,000 out of me and my insurance companies (the price has increased some – when I first started, I was paying around $19 per month).
When I tried to talk to my insurance company about just buying the machine, I was told that it was against policy because renting it assured that someone would “monitor the equipment.” Right. Monitoring the equipment is apparently code for someone coming in twice a year to switch out a little 1 inch filter – at $1,645.56 per year, that’s over $800 per filter. (Yeah, I priced them too – $13.41 each.)
The now-famous Invacare Perfecto2. The Perfecto2 is Invacare’s lightest, smallest, and most energy efficient home oxygen concentrator. $706.30. Plus free shipping.
Read the entire article here.
