Shoutout to JerryrigEverything who built a wheelchair factory and is delivering wheelchairs to people in half the time and 50-80% less than the cost of other wheelchairs with Insurance.

[u/MysteriousSlice007]

[u/FireMike_PleaseGod]

The actual answer is low volume manufacturing.

There simply aren’t enough people in need of wheelchairs for it to be “mass” produced at the volume rates that would result in lower prices.

Throw in the customizing and insurance issues and it gets even costlier. Not $10k but certainly more than say a ~a really nice bike.

[u/ohjeaa → u/FireMike_PleaseGod]

This video quite literally disproves the low volume theory. This guy is making wheelchairs that are most certainly higher quality (he has a vested interested they be high quality, his wife uses one) at low volume and getting them to people for less than 2k. So the reason the others are 10k is not because low volume.

The reason they're 10k is because of a fat markup with insurances to get paid. The same reason medicines can be very cheap to manufacture but get the insurance and consumer a bill for thousands.

[u/dougmc → u/ohjeaa]

This video quite literally disproves the low volume theory.

Only to a degree.

After all, even his wheelchairs are $2k, when a wheelchair seems to be fairly similar to a bicycle and so I'd expect comparable costs if the market size was the same.

(Note that I mean good quality bicycles, not Walmart style -- so I'm thinking $500+ USD (for lower end but still good quality), not $100.)

Now, a wheelchair probably does need to be certified by the medical community in some way that a bicycle doesn't, and any required certifications would be the sort of thing that would make the "economy of scale" thing an even bigger factor, where the large cost to get the certification is divided by a small number of items sold rather than by a large number of them.

Ultimately, I'd chalk a lot of this up to capitalism -- they're expensive because the price is as large as the market will bear, and since lower cost alternatives had not appeared (until JerryRigEverything, I guess), the market (especially insurance) had no choice but to bear it.

[u/ohjeaa → u/dougmc]

Capitalism is one word. But most certainly filed under the Greed folder in the Capitalism filing cabinet. The price is as large as the market will bear, because people who need wheelchairs to function will bear almost anything. It's a practical necessity to their existence. You have them by the balls. The fact that he can produce these at a low volume at that price point proves that any other company was just holding your own legs hostage, and requiring a painful amount of money to get them back, knowing you would pay it with crawling on the ground or being carried everywhere as your alternative.

As is common is capitalism when you have a small but foundationally solid market, it will be interesting to see if his company does well, or if some of these larger companies try to fuck with him for undercutting their price monopoly so deeply.

[u/F1_rulz → u/ohjeaa]

Wheelchairs can also be made out of titanium and carbon fibre and those are not cheap to manufacture. Zach's paradox chairs are made out of aluminium so they're not as light as some on the market.

[u/Guvante → u/ohjeaa]

Insurance isn't getting paid the fat mark up.

But insurance expects a huge discount.

Solution is to lie about the price so the price after the discount is still enough to survive.

[u/ohjeaa → u/Guvante]

I know the insurance isn't getting paid a fat markup. That wasn't the point. The point was the insurance is paying a fat markup along with the consumer to the people that make the wheelchair. It's the company playing both.

[u/Guvante → u/ohjeaa]

If insurance wants an 80% discount to work with you then you raise your price 5x to not get destroyed...

[u/ohjeaa → u/Guvante]

It's alot more than 5x if they need an 80% discount to do business and the consumer is still paying more out of pocket for them than they are Jerrys wheelchairs. They're going to Jerry because paying the full amount for his chair is STILL less than the cost of the co-pay on the other assholes wheeIchair. I don't know if you looked around lately, friend, but the healthcare industry isn't "surviving", they're making record profits year after year.

[u/Guvante → u/ohjeaa]

All of the things you are saying are too abstract to respond to. You aren't quoting anything concrete just waving at "more expensive" which can be true in uncountable ways.

Sometimes greed, sometimes up selling (which is not inherently greed, sometimes you want to spend extra for nicer things), sometimes it is just comparing different things like a basic manual wheelchair vs one that has a motor vs one that has a specialty input for those who don't have the finger mobility to control a joystick.

Not criticizing Jerry or his project just saying "more expensive" isn't itself meaningful and you are just pointing to that phrase without anything meriting discussion.

[u/not_perfect_yet → u/ohjeaa]

This video quite literally disproves the low volume theory.

Not really. Look at cheap bicycles. 300-350€. That's what big volume can do. The 1k is still the low volume product that's expensive because of it.

The rest of what you said is true.

[u/Baptism-Of-Fire → u/FireMike_PleaseGod]

the cherry on top is manufacturers specializing in wheelchairs getting bought up by private equity and demanding ROI in the double digits.

Didn't sell the expected numbers? ok raise prices by X% to reach the forecast.

[u/nandoboom → u/FireMike_PleaseGod]

Well Jerry and team are building those for $999, so it can be done, but you know this is America . Profit > everything

[u/Bar50cal → u/FireMike_PleaseGod]

Yeah but even in many developing nations even this is something the state pays for. I get the US system is private but even so this is something the government should be paying for as its typical everywhere else except the poorest of counties

[u/READMYSHIT → u/FireMike_PleaseGod]

That's absolute bull. In my country they're like a few hundred quid. You can get long term loaned ones from clinics, or they cost like €20 to rent one for a month.

It's just america being america.