Originally Posted by shakran

The other problem is that not everyone who needs a wheelchair can use the thing. You have to have some upper body strength for the stair climbing feature because otherwise you run the risk of flopping out of the chair. Additionally, your average disabled person who is in a powerchair is not going to feel comfortable teetering up the stairs balanced on side by side wheels. The wheelchair is a disabled person's legs. A fall down the stairs would not only possibly damage or kill the person, it would definitely damage the chair.


A good powerchair these days costs between 20 and 30 thousand dollars. Sometimes more. A really spectacular insurance program will generally cover most of that. I don't even want to imagine what that thing costs, and insurance probably isn't going to see a legitimate medical need to ascend stairs when most of the public world is (or at least claims to be) powerchair accessible.

"But if they have stairs at home they'd have to move to an accessible house to use a powerchair" you say? Yup, that's true, but accessible homes are not considered durable medical equipment and are therefore generally not paid for by insurance. - - i.e. the ins. company doesn't have to pay, which is all they care about.

those Rascals are cheap pieces of crap that are all over because even crappy ins. companies tend to not kick up too much of a fuss about paying for them. There is a very, VERY, big difference between a Rascal and, say, a Permobil.

Long story short on the iBot? Neat idea, very VERY limited number of people who could make use of the thing, and has nothing whatsoever to do with "the US invents it but can't bring the prices down."