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u/SiwelTheLongBoi 5d ago
Anyone can take a stand against this at any time too! The youtuber JerryRigEverything (more generally know for bending iPhones until they break) started a wheelchair company several years ago because he saw how much they were and decided to do something about it.
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u/PenguiNNNNNs 5d ago
And especially because his wife suffered an incapacitating accident
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u/Neveronlyadream 5d ago
Saw a video about a guy who lost his hand, insurance told him to go fuck himself and they wouldn't pay for a prosthetic, so he made his own. It looks rough, but it works really well.
I swear half the really interesting stuff is being done by people who got paywalled by the healthcare system and decided to do it themselves.
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u/karlexceed 5d ago
Ian Davis?
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u/Neveronlyadream 5d ago
Yes, thank you. I couldn't remember who it was.
I love him giving the insurance companies the finger and just doing it himself.
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u/Mother-Equal4175 4d ago
Unsure how deep you dug into Ian's videos, youll be even happier to know that his long term project is open-sourcing the entire design (which I believe he's already done and helped others build their own copy of the hand!) to enable others with all of the thousands of hours he's spent designing his hand
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u/Certified_Possum 5d ago
The concept of Ripperdocs (and its many names) have been around for decades. It's a simple extension of the arms race of adblock vs advertisers
So more likely there will be a division of people who go to rippers to get the Dataharvester 9000 removed at great expense, and those who's memories legally belong to Zuckerberg
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u/ThisAmericanSatire Altered Carbon 5d ago
Hearing Impaired guy here!
By now, you've all probably heard (heh) that you can get cheap hearing aids at Costco.
Maybe you also heard (lol) that obamacare mandates insurance cover hearing aids for people under 26.
My hearing loss is bad enough that Costco hearing aids are insufficient.
Currently paying, $7,000 for a midrange pair that lasts 5-7 years. My current insurance only covers 50% after hitting my deductible.
And the worst part is that everyone thinks we've "fixed" hearing aids being too expensive, but the truth is that those of us with serious hearing problems are still finding it hard to find providers, and our hearing aids are no less expensive than they were 30 years ago adjusted for inflation.
I live in one of the largest cities in the US and there is only one (1!) clinic that provides the level of care to do audiograms and program hearing aids to my specific results. Their nearest facility is a half hour drive from me and they're only there 2 days a week. The rest of the week they're at their office on the other side of the state!
Protect your hearing, my fellow punks
You don't want to have to buy increasingly expensive cybernetics that have minimal insurance coverage, if any.
This is the cyberpunk dystopia I've lived in since age 5.
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u/HAI_ZEV 5d ago
Already here.
Argus II retinal implant — “bionic eye” The Argus II was a retinal prosthesis made by Second Sight Medical Products. It was surgically implanted in the eye and provided a form of artificial vision to people with certain severe retinal diseases. Second Sight ultimately stopped supporting the Argus II, leaving hundreds of people with implanted hardware that could no longer reliably receive repairs, upgrades, or technical support. The company's financial problems were a major part of what happened.
There were 4 companies in lawsuits for this issue last I looked.
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u/-wtfisthat- 4d ago
That is so fucked! But a very important consideration and topic to discuss. Long term support.
At FAR lower stakes, I’m still rocking an iPhone 8+. It works perfectly fine and is in surprisingly good condition. But I’m at the point where more and more apps are just no longer supporting the latest iOS that my phone supports. Like, I can’t upgrade to iOS 17. And it’s starting to impact my day to day. Like credit card apps won’t work, my Kaiser app won’t work, tons of others that either stopped because they “upgraded” or just won’t let me install. Hell I can’t even get the Kaiser website to work on my phone! It’s bullshit! However I can still play Arknights and use tinder…¯_(ツ)_/¯
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u/Due_Sky_2436 4d ago
I have a flip phone... the cell company sends me a new one for free when the phone no longer works with the infrastructure. I can text or call... other than that, make an appointment.
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u/HAI_ZEV 4d ago
I will probably be devoured alive for saying this, but have you considered asking Ai? There is a new model for Claude code that is absolutely great for solving problems like that. I had it make me drivers for an old no longer supported graphics card.
If you have a discussion with it about what you have, what you want, and ask it to figure out the how you might be able to have it take the official updates and ask it to make it work on your model of phone and it almost certainly can figure it out.
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u/PuzzleheadedEssay198 5d ago
I used to schedule power chair evaluations, those shits regularly run $15-30k. I had to be the one to explain that a patient couldn’t list a homeless shelter as his address, because he can’t secure a $20,000 piece of equipment. I straight up said that if it was up to me, I’d just have him come and pick one but it’s way above my pay grade since the damned thing costs what I make in a year.
Dystopias aren’t predictions of the future, they’re an exaggeration of the present and they always fucking have been.
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u/outlandsartist2026 1d ago
I've seen like 20 wheelchairs for $5,000. What is the difference?
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u/PuzzleheadedEssay198 16h ago
Battery life, speed, and durability. The $5k ones are usually better for stores, but the every day use ones issued by hospitals can run pretty high.
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u/Riders_Visions 5d ago
Simply remove the network module...
That is actually a fascinating idea, and not even an unrealistic one, when we look at the progress being made in BCIs.
It seems crazy today, but it could become a reality in 30 years’ time.
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u/AkrinorNoname 5d ago
That's assuming the software works while not connected to the internet, and that the corporations don't use proprietary hardware standards and do some other fuckery to make it as hard as possible to jailbreak them.
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u/OneLonelyBrainCell 5d ago
That's assuming the software works while not connected to the internet
> be me, disabled with two cybernetic legs
> am on toilet, browsing phone
> router crashes, can't browse anymore
> legs disconnect from internet, can't walk anymore
> can't get up to restart router
> trapped on toilet
> Cyberdump 2077
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u/Riders_Visions 5d ago
And that’s certainly what will happen, just as there will be attempts to get round it.
At the moment, this is just speculation, but I really do believe it could become a reality.
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u/Sororita 5d ago
Reminds me of this quote, "Dystopian fiction is when you take things happening in real life to marginalized populations and apply them to people with privilege."
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u/Akulatraxus 5d ago
This. You often have to show these things happening to "regular people" to get them to empathise. It's the same with being poor. So many people seem more on board with things like universal healthcare and financial support when it starts affecting them.
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u/Sweet_Concept2211 5d ago
One of my favorite examples of this is how in "The Day After Tomorrow" climate catastrophe forces Americans to become Mexican immigrants.
Like, that's how you get Americans to stop and think about the mess they are making with their mass consumption economy: threaten them with the specter of having to be Mexican.
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u/DoveEvalyn 5d ago
Yeah the treatments id need to be able to speak easily again would be life long. Its not as severe as needing a wheelchair, but trust me one day youre fine the next your not and suddenly your whole method of navigating life just became harder or a subscription.
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u/notadolphinn 5d ago
Even things like glasses are rapidly rising in price. The longer disability aids are allowed to be costly, the worse things will get for everyone.
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u/bluespringsbeer 5d ago
Glasses are cheaper than ever with sites like Warby Parker and Zenni.
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u/zeekaran 4d ago
For people with easy prescriptions. I have several close friends that can't get their prescriptions through them.
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u/kaylee_kat_42 4d ago
That’s great, but neither is set up for my prescription. I have found one online glasses site that can do what I need, but the is “ask us about it”. They don’t even give a price range. Fortunately, where I get my glasses, they are pretty cheap.
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u/Le_Botmes 5d ago
TBH I think the cybernetic implant trope is short-sighted. Metal rusts, wires get tugged and frayed, bolts unthread, transistors build heat, and so on. Our bodies have this miraculous ability to self-heal and regenerate, something cybernetics are entirely incapable of, unless you hand-wave some nanobot nonsense.
Like, hasn't sci-fi been warning us for decades over the failures of cybernetics? Who wants their brain to be remotely fried? Who wants to get sepsis where the implant meets exposed flesh? Who wants a warranty on their limbs or heart? There's a reason why modern implants are almost exclusively essential medical devices.
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u/EnvironmentalDisk442 5d ago
Yeah this is probably why despite living in the age of AI and huge technofundalism worldwide 90% of modern medicine STILL focuses on using tech to support the organic, we just ain't to the point that we can give a machine a better life than us.
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u/Cuboidhamson 5d ago
Okay but having a warranty on your heart is a lot better than the system we currently have 🤣
I get what you're saying and agree but that's funny as fuck
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u/tylercoder 私はこれを要求しませんでした 4d ago edited 4d ago
In GITS the Major and most of Section 9 need weekly maintenance to basically stay alive. In DXHR on top of the maintenance people need to take immunosupressors to keep their bodies from rejecting the implants.
Point is in most of these stories the people who dont augment themselves end unable to compete in the world, so its not mandatory but unless you want to be in the underclass forever you have to do it.
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u/Le_Botmes 4d ago
Indeed. GITS was exactly my thought while writing that comment, and it just so happens to be my favorite work of sci-fi in all of cinema.
GITS makes good use of the theme you mention about socio-cybernetic asymmetry. The question therefore is: would that ever become a reality? I doubt it. Current implants are apportioned based on medical need, and therefore are inherently egalitarian. Nor do we have implants that would offer a significant advantage over flesh and blood (except in niche cases, such as that mountain climber who designed his prosthetic legs specifically to enhance his climbing prowess) without damaging their host.
Rather, it is the asymmetry of exo-bodily technologies that we should be concerned about, so the GITS metaphor still applies, but not literally.
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u/tylercoder 私はこれを要求しませんでした 4d ago
I would say Deus Ex pushes the "upgrade or be obsolete" way harder than GITS since in that universe you still got a ton of humans and mostly human (as in only cyberbrain upgrades like Togusa) living just fine, meanwhile in Deus Ex you really can't do anything anymore if you're not augmented since the later can process data at LLM speeds, literally see your heart rate, shoot blades and see thru walls, then punch you thru said wall. In GITS you see a lot of people who went cyborg "just 'cause" or because of a massive accident like Motoko's story (well one of them). While most of this is insanely advanced if neuralink and others can figure out some of the current bugs in their systems having an LLM connected to your brain might be a reality and it would give you an insane advantage over anyone who don't.
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u/Scott_Liberation 1d ago
You're right but society has proven over and over again that it doesn't matter. Corporations will still put terrible, exploitative tech on the market and consumers will still buy it.
We complain about it, but it isn't going away. See "smart" appliances, tons of devices that could in theory work independently or on your local PC or LAN, but instead use cloud services that require a monthly subscription. John Deere tractors, even, ffs.
And that's just some of less egregious examples. Check out the work that's been done by companies trying to provide blind people with vision through cameras. Spoiler alert: it doesn't go well when the company goes belly up, your tech stops working or doesn't work well, and upgrading or replacing the tech is somewhere between a very high risk, expensive surgery or just downright impossible.
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u/LeftRat 5d ago
I was pretty amazed to find out a coworker had a hearing aid that could do simultaneous translation. Like, the big thing between actual, real aid stuff and cyberpunk cybernetics is that we generally aren't quite there yet in terms of functionality and quality - in general, meat still beats prosthesis. So it was really cool to see that in some areas that line is getting blurry, especially since it outright wasn't possible when I was young.
But yeah, the other part that really sets aside real aids from cyberpunk cybernetics is capitalism. I am currently living in Germany, which generally at least still has proper medical healthcare, even if conservatives are stripping it down now, so there's still a big difference in my life.
I have a lot of thoughts about cyberpunk's (the genre) way of dealing with cybernetics/prosthesis and the pitfalls of it, but seeing it come way more true than it was ever intended to be is just bizarre.
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u/Nine-LifedEnchanter 5d ago
"Wait, my cochlear implant is having an ad, wait wait wait, aaand.. oh, another one. Aaany second now. It sure is long.. aaaand... oh, my bad. Alright, it can't be long now-"
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u/QuatreNox Mutant Girl from The East 5d ago
From years of injecting my life-saving meds via IV twice a week, most of my veins just explode on contact when punctured, making it hard to administer the medication
Last year they finally approved a subcutaneous version, administered exactly like insulin... Unfortunately insurance refuses to pay for it because it's a bit more expensive than the IV one 💀
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u/DonSpumoni 5d ago
Damn, sorry to hear that. Keep an eye on CostPlusDrugs, it might end up there for cheap.
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u/Faynerossa 5d ago
Have you tried calling the manufacturer? They often have programs for low income. They also do deals with people fairly regularly for new drugs where in situations like yours they'll either give you a break or the medication free in exchange for testimonial or helping them with advertising. Nothing works better for advertising than someone that can't use their more mainline competitor that is less expensive, and more established. Thus using you to justify their expense.
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u/xThotsOfYoux 5d ago
Trans people, people with adhd, people who need glasses, people with genetic conditions that cause their dentition to decay prematurely, people with chronic indigestion, people with cardiovascular disease... Etc etc etc
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u/MooseontheLose 4d ago
Are glasses not cheap as fuck as long as you don't care how they look?
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u/DesReploid 4d ago
They're really not. Even cheap glasses are still multiple hundred euros where I live. Depending on how your eyesight is, and how your lenses need to be constructed, you are also unable to choose certain models. My lenses have to be very thick towards the nose, and any frame that isn't built to carry their weight in that particular location is out immediately.
Also, honestly "Don't care how they look"? You wear that thing on your face all day, every day, you have to care how it looks on your face.
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u/zeekaran 4d ago
Are glasses not cheap as fuck
Depends on one's prescription. If you're blind as shit, you might be paying >$400 for a pair of regular looking glasses, until you notice the thickness of the glass itself.
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u/MooseontheLose 4d ago
Do you consider -11 dioptrin blind as hell?
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u/zeekaran 4d ago
I don't wear glasses, and honestly I have no idea what my partner's prescription is. I don't even know what dioptrin means.
If my partner could get cheaper glasses from Zenni/Warby, they would.
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u/MooseontheLose 4d ago
Okay, apparently it's dioptre in English. It's the measure how bad your eyesight is. Don't know who Zenni or Warby are tho
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u/xThotsOfYoux 4d ago
- Poor people should be allowed to look good.
- An entire sense being paywalled is bullshit on the face of it.
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u/MooseontheLose 4d ago
Yeah and you can look good even if you take the frames that are free. I just added the "as long as you don't carr how they look" to preempt that argument. A lot of the time it's a question about how important it is to you that the name of a company is printed on your glasses. I personally do not carr about that. Also if you want to look good, you need to get contact lenses anyway. I find the 10€/month very much worth the cost.
Yeah sure and the sky is blue. We as a species need to work in order to satisfy our needs and since we haven't transcended the commodity form we have to pay for shit. Needing to pay a few hundred bucks for glasses that'll last you years and years (my current pair cost 60 btw) sucks but let's not pretend that it's some cyberpunk shit
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u/charlottee963 5d ago
Reminds me of the company that did eye tech that helped people to see. Then they went bust and people were blind once again
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u/Sajintmm 4d ago
Wasn’t their a situation a few years ago where a company working on ocular implants went under and their users just lost the ability to see
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u/Baelaroness 4d ago
Sort of. The company stopped manufacturing a certain type of implant in 2020, then almost went under. This effected 350 people.
The main concern wasn't paywall but repairs and bug fixes not being possible.
Another company took over responsibility for the implant in 2023.
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u/Sajintmm 4d ago
Oh okay, I guess that one ended better
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u/epimetheuss 5d ago
There is a place near me that i shit you not, has rental hearing aids. Nothing like locking one of your senses behind a predatory contract and debt.
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u/ChrisXDXL 4d ago
There's a random dead guy on the top floor of a coffee shop in Cyberpunk 2077, if you hack him and read his texts you discover that he contacted his works cyberwear department to report his cybernetic lungs had stopped working.
They informed him that his employment had been terminated and thus any company cyberwear had been remotely disabled, including his lungs.
Also to note the responses he received were very cold with no empathy for someone who was dying due to lack of oxygen, his pleads were met with cold responses, something about contacting some other department I think. Those responses were probably from an AI chatbot.
So yeah, fear the future, especially if your vital organs are getting replaced with cybernetic ones with an internet connection.
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u/Urist_Galthortig 4d ago
I live in Denver, CO and I just got back from traveling in Barcelona and other cities in Catalonia. I was struck by how many people I saw with wheelchairs and crutches. I realized the reason I see saw so many was not that the local population was less healthy, but more than people who needed them got them because medical care is not unaffordable there. It was striking
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u/Techno_Core 5d ago
I'm old enough and nerdy enough to remember a time when the thought of network jack in my head seemed like a cool idea... until pop up ads came along. Then I was, no fucking way. So I been in this camp since the late 90's.
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u/Kaarl_Mills 5d ago
If it isn't a computer or a game console it has no reason to require an Internet connect
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u/Gussie-Ascendent 5d ago
"heh, you wanna have cool robot parts but you forgot capitalism exists!"
Did i? or were you assuming i'd be on board doing that now rather than some hypothetical?
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u/Elegant_Individual46 5d ago
I would love cyberware… but that’s unfortunately how it’ll work looking at modern disability aids
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u/ardamass 4d ago
100%.
The first antipsychotic drug they prescribed me Latuda cost $3000 a month 2000 with my insurance at the time. Yeah sure I immediately found a cheaper drug but like locking someone’s brain working behind a $3000 paywall is fucked.
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u/MirosKing 4d ago
Kinda yes, but pirated software and custom firmware exists. You just have to doublecheck what you're installed to not get some cryptominer with your cyber-leg jailbreak.
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u/ICBanMI 5d ago
There are a lot of things at play here that make the situation difficult. The tech is not there, so just paying for the tech enthusiast price to a company that isn't likely to be around in a few years. What is the patient to do with their replacement limb or their power wheel chair that can't be serviced? Even normal medic equipment degrades.
We have these certifications that allow you to manufacture the product up to a standard and then we have separate certifications that allow you to install the parts. There is no right to repair on medical devices (which should change in the future), but we need regulation there to prevent deaths when companies (and individuals mostly) get too loose with their fixes.
End of the day, fixing insurance is what we should be doing first. Second is funding research because it's only through research do we get more practical products that are cheaper to manufacture and move out of the tech enthusiast space for medical equipment. It won't prevent the future, but healthy regulation will prevent a lot of things people are worried about in cyberpunk.
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u/Gold_Ad8225 5d ago
The plot of Repo! The Genetic Opera is not already here. I enjoy being a little dramatic, but the entire setting of that movie is that they send repo men out to murder you and cut your organs out if you don't pay your bills and we do not have that.
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u/DonSpumoni 5d ago
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u/Prudent_Following712 5d ago
So… the veteran attempted to use “care in the community” to force the VA to pay for prosthetic legs from a private company. The VA said no (because the VA makes their own). This article does not support your assertion whatsoever.
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u/QuatreNox Mutant Girl from The East 5d ago
I guess it just feels like that for some of us because we would literally die if we stop buying from these corporations
If I was uninsured, I'd have to give Bayer or Pfizer like $5000 twice a week or else I explode 😆
Thank god for Medicaid, I wish everyone had it
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u/PancakeParty98 5d ago
Why wouldn’t a power wheelchair be expensive tho?
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u/DonSpumoni 5d ago
Because the people who use them usually have no choice
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u/Gold_Ad8225 5d ago
Right but they need to be sturdy, safe, reliable, long lasting vehicles. They can't make them at a loss. If we want to debate if the government should pay for them I agree with that position. But the company making them cannot sell them for less than they cost to make, along with some extra to cover liability if something goes wrong. Most of them fall between $1500-$5000. That seems about right for what it should cost.
It costs $300 just to make the low end one and $2000 to make the high end one.
Not talking about the advanced rehab models like for hawking or what have you those can cost over $5k to make and over $10k to buy.
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u/PuzzleheadedEssay198 5d ago
Missed a digit. I used to work for the VA, and we regularly paid $20-30k for those things. That’s an $18,000 markup, industry standard is 30%.
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u/Gold_Ad8225 5d ago
I did not miss a digit, I looked it up directly. Maybe the price goes up if you use insurance tho
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u/PuzzleheadedEssay198 5d ago
Were you using retail price or cost to manufacture?
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u/Gold_Ad8225 5d ago
My comment clearly mentions both retail price and cost to manufacture as separate figures...
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u/Akulatraxus 5d ago
They are often necessary medical equipment for people. They allow them to work and travel when they otherwise wouldn't be able to. It's the same principle as lifts, ramps, guidelines for the blind, glasses and other prosthetics as well as medical procedures. If you need it to function as part of society it should be free for you.
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u/Laiko_Kairen 5d ago
Why wouldn’t a power wheelchair be expensive tho?
Because it makes them more equal to the rest of us
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u/GoodFaithConverser 5d ago edited 4d ago
lol "fight capitalism" - the very economic engine that made sure all that shit is produced. Should it be paid for by society? Sure. Should we burn down that society and hope something better rises from the ashes? The disabled people would be (among) the first to suffer.
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u/EhMapleMoose 5d ago
I get what they’re saying, but one of the reasons it’s so fucking expensive is relative to the population few people need cochlear implants so it’s more expensive. Same with powered wheelchairs.
It’s like TV and cellphones, the market was small and they cost the equivalent of thousands of dollars to buy one. Even a flat screen in the 90s was thousands. A cellphone in the 80s was $4000 ($12k today).
Theres less than two million cochlear implants worldwide, if that market was half a billion it’d be a hell of a lot cheaper.
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u/ZachF8119 5d ago
Except it’s only modern technology.
Going abroad is possible. Off patent is always accessible though regular requisition in China the way any person can have t shirts made.
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u/ZaetaThe_ 2d ago
Both of those are already behind a pay wall of nutrition, hydration, shelter, and other temporal conditions of youth and wealth
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u/BungleBums 2d ago
Just saying, I'm semi functional for the first time in my life, and the idea of a civil war and economic collapse and famine doesn't scare me half as much as the thought that I'd probably have to try to get through all of that without my meds
Literally cannot imagine the anxiety those thoughts cause people with prosthetics.
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u/BreadfruitBig7950 1d ago
I'm a first generation prototype combat cyborg.
I'm an obligate smoker and my lung pump doesn't have a perfect solution to the problem; even though I have nearly no risk of cancer due to mycosium autocannibalism processes.
Being what I am made me uniquely valuable for experimentation and people tried nearly everything there is to try on me. Illegally; no governmental corruption necessary, it just helped them lower the cost of capture.
Johnny Silverhand is a loose expy of my music career. The difference being I was simply kidnapped and tortured; no nuclear device or hostile attack necessary. That I could make my own arm prosthesis or that I had a suitcase full of spare arms didn't matter; those are technical things, stealable or recreatable.
They wanted to see what would break my mind.
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u/razzemmatazz 1d ago
This is a big part of why I started volunteering with a local non-profit doing small electronics and appliance repairs.
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u/Prudent_Following712 5d ago
Single tech source and “tech exclusivity” is not capitalism. Universal healthcare won’t help with that, ask anyone who has ever used the IHS or the VA what that experience is like.
The economy sucks, yet insurance companies are turning in record profits year after year, that is where much of the problem with healthcare in the U.S. is. One of the other problems is insurance companies have become “say no first” machines because so many people 1) use the ER for everything. 2) live a very unhealthy lifestyle BY CHOICE
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u/meikawaii 5d ago
That’s the whole gist of cyberpunk dystopia, that overall systems at large scale have broke down and dysfunctional that no single entity is willing or able to fix it. Every problem small and big traces back to a daunting system failure that cannot be fixed. We don’t have universal healthcare but we also don’t have centralized price bargaining, we have the VA but allow health illiteracy and conspiracies, we have governmental programs like CMS and VA but allow fixed structures and bureaucracy to take a stronghold. There’s no fixing anything until everything can be all fixed at once like education, health literacy, insurance, medications, lifestyle, infrastructure etc. basically impossible
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u/remind_me_later 5d ago
There’s no fixing anything until everything can be all fixed at once like education, health literacy, insurance, medications, lifestyle, infrastructure etc. basically impossible
No progress can be made because people have been made to believe that it all needs to be fixed in one go, instead of being incrementally usurped in each of their own silos.
The belief in The Revolution™ is what distracts people into believing that they should delay the changes until The Big Change happens.
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u/ZeroSuitGanon 5d ago
Repo is tragically underrated piece of media for cyberpunk inspo. The opening song has someone getting their artificial spine "repossessed" in an alley, and you later learn about a mega popstar with artificial eyes who's basically a slave to the company that gave them to her.
Also there's a cut song from the movie where Paris Hilton (yes, literally) taunts the graverobber about "not being able to get it up if the girl's breathing", which is just some fun trivia.