Advocacy Team
Take Action: Protect Complex Rehabilitation Technology
Dear Access Living friends and allies,
Did you know that laws are in place that limit Medicare/Medicaid payments on critical components of manual wheelchairs, components which ensure the health and safety of manual wheelchair users?
Quality Complex Rehabilitation Technology (CRT) is to all wheelchair users. It is essential that wheelchairs fit the needs of the person using them to ensure that they have the best quality of life as possible.
Complex Rehabilitation power and manual wheelchairs along with related critical components are used by a small population of people with significant disabilities such as ALS, cerebral palsy, multiple sclerosis, muscular dystrophy, spinal cord injury, and traumatic brain injury. Within the Medicare program these individuals represent less than 15% of all Medicare beneficiaries who use wheelchairs, but they absolutely depend on the liberation of their wheelchairs.
Today, we ask you to contact your members of Congress and ask them to support H.R. 2293/S.1223 and H.R. 2408.
H.R. 2293/S. 1223 would stop Medicaid/Medicare payment cuts on critical components of manual wheelchairs.
H.R. 2408 would create a separate benefit category for CRT to allow better access and safeguards through proper segregation and needed improvements in coverage, coding, and supplier standards.
The National Coalition for Assistive and Rehab Technology (NCART) has set up a page where you can contact your Congressional Representatives and Senators about this topic:
Click here to email your Representatives and Senators
Click here to call your Representatives and Senators
For more information on Access Living advocacy efforts on CRT, please contact Ryan McGraw, Access Living’s Health/Home and Community Based Services Organizer.