If you need a lift chair and you meet your insurance's coverage guidelines, they may pay for all or part of the cost of the lift chair.  Coverage criteria and payment amounts will vary depending on the type of insurance you have.  Most heath care insurance companies, including Medicare, have minimum requirements that need to be met before they will purchase a lift chair for you.

Lift Chairs

A seat lift mechanism is covered if all of the following criteria are met:

1.  The patient must have severe arthritis of the hip or knee or have a severe neuromuscular disease.

2.  The seat lift mechanism must be a part of the physician's course of treatment and be prescribed to effect improvement, or arrest or retard deterioration in the patient's condition.

3.  The patient must be completely incapable of standing up from a regular armchair or any chair in their home. (The fact that a patient has difficulty or is even incapable of getting up from a chair, particularly a low chair, is not sufficient justification for a seat lift mechanism. Almost all patients who are capable of ambulating can get out of an ordinary chair if the seat height is appropriate and the chair has arms.)

4.  Once standing, the patient must have the ability to ambulate.

Coverage of seat lift mechanisms is limited to those types which operate smoothly, can be controlled by the patient, and effectively assist a patient in standing up and sitting down without other assistance. Excluded from coverage is the type of lift which operates by spring release mechanism with a sudden, catapult-like motion and jolts the patient from a seated to a standing position.  Coverage is limited to the seat lift mechanism, even if it is incorporated into a chair.