Last August I became the proud owner of the inCourage Vest system. It’s lightyears beyond the huge Hill-Rom unit that you need to hold down on the little pneumatic pedal with your hand or foot. THAT stupid pedal was the main reason I hadn’t used the Hill-Rom vest in over 8 years. By the way, it’s in the garage if you want it.
This machine is a thing of beauty. It fits under our end table and you push one button and it cycles through a range of frequencies every 2 minutes for 30 minutes without any further interaction needed.
Our private insurance policy, which I got after COBRA because I had a continuous coverage certificate that negates any pre-existing condition clause, has a $3,000 out-of-pocket max per year. This wonderful invoice for $1,200 pushed us over the out-of-pocket limit for the year, but by the time we got everything straightened out with their billing, we just didn’t have the extra money to pay the bill now that we got our tax paperwork back from my CPA. Business was good last year… too good for the estimated payments and savings we made, so we owe a nice chunk to the IRS. Combine that with really rough February sales, we were drawing from that nice savings account we had in place for emergencies.
We requested a hardship waiver from them since my insurance company already paid them more than $10k and I felt that they had enough money for this device. It was a couple of hours of work to fill out the form and get our W2’s together, but to save $1,200 we “made” something like $300/hr!
The best news: I have a terrific vibrato when I sing with the vest on!
