What great brain at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) came up with the idea to curb access to prosthetics for the disabled?
What is supposedly driving CMS?
It's a half-wit effort to put a dent in fraud for lower-limb prosthetics --estimated at just $43 million relative to CMS's annual budget of close to $1 trillion!
Uh, doesn't CMS have anything better to do then pick on disabled people missing one or more legs?
The profound dumbness of the proposed CMS new rules would limit amputees from possible reimbursement for artificial limbs for example, "if they use assistive devices such as canes or crutches."
But isn't that precisely what someone who can't walk and is missing a limb would use???
Here's the next doozy...CMS would limit advanced prosthetics "if the device doesn't enable them to walk with the appearance of a natural gait."
OMG, this is too much!
People with disabilities who require help need it precisely because they are not "natural" in their mobility functions--that is what we are seeking to help them with.
You're going to penalize someone from getting artificial limbs because they still can't walk completely normal with fake limbs like with real ones?
Moreover, if the Veteran's Administration adopts these rules, this will also affect our wounded warfighters.
G-d (and the Secretary of HHS) needs to put some sense back in the minds of the people who, in this case, instead of helping the disabled are misguidedly working against them. ;-)
(Source Photo: Dannielle Blumenthal)