Health Insurance paying for house generator

[dreamingofdreaming]

I was talking to some friends, who told me that their parent's health insurance company paid for a portion of a whole house generator because of the need for back up power for a CPAP. Has anyone heard of this?

[chunkyfrog]

Nope.

[LSAT]

Will never happen...keep dreaming

[D.H.]

No Way!

Perhaps a battery backup that will work for one or two nights; if you're lucky!

[chunkyfrog]

Not even a Congressional insurance plan!
They would stay in a HOTEL--paid for with TAXES.

[dreamingofdreaming]

Thanks for the info. I thought it sounded crazy, but couldn’t hurt to ask.

[dreamingofdreaming]

...keep dreaming

Nice. I see what you did there.

[SirGaspAlot]

Yeah, I’ve never seen health insurance pay for something like a whole house generator. Maybe if you have a specific home care setup, like through disability services or government programs, but even then it’s usually just smaller-scale equipment or backup batteries, like a travel CPAP battery or medical-grade power bank. I had a family member who was on oxygen at night, and even then, we just made sure to keep a charged battery backup, not a full generator.

If you’re seriously looking into private coverage and how far it can go with support equipment or unique medical needs, there’s a pretty detailed review on https://premierpmi.co.uk/freedom-health ... ce-review/ that breaks down some of that stuff. Worth checking to get a better idea of what’s actually covered.

[zonker]

[GrandmaA]

Not likely at all. Health insurance only covers the actual DME in this context. A whole house generator is not DME but a home modification. The friend's parents making this claim might have been talking about LTC insurance which is a bit broader, and will sometimes cover home modifications if they are necessary to keep the person living independently in the home. For example, wheelchair ramps.

However, for an LTC policy to pay for a generator, there would need to be physician's documentation that uninterrupted CPAP is necessary to prevent hospitalization or institutionalization, the generator would need to be the only viable solution (too frequent and prolonged outages for batteries to suffice), and the policy would need to be written in such a way as not to exclude it, like for example, some policies list specific home modifications they cover with the exclusion of anything not specifically listed.

So in theory, I guess such an LTC policy could have covered part of the cost in the friend's parents' case, but I think it's much more likely the story got mixed up in the retelling.

[Janknitz]

I work with someone who is ventilator dependent. She lives at home. Government programs have covered a whole house generator for her, because her life is immediately at risk during power outages. But I'd be very surprised if that's covered for CPAP.

[GrandmaA]

I work with someone who is ventilator dependent. She lives at home. Government programs have covered a whole house generator for her, because her life is immediately at risk during power outages. But I'd be very surprised if that's covered for CPAP.

Right. There are government programs that cover that kind of thing, but not health insurance per se. And like you said, even those programs aren't likely to cover a whole house generator just for nightime CPAP.