No, you can't buy a reasonable quality wheelchair for less. You can buy what a person who doesn't need a wheelchair consider reasonable. If you had to use those cheap chairs for 16 hours a day, and pushing yourself even just for a mile of well paved roads, not even uphill, you would never consider those reasonable.
This is absolutely the point. You have to live sitting in there. That must be more comfortable than the best thing in your house. No way you can do it for less than 1k.
The OP isn't about hospital wheelchairs, but daily use wheelchairs. It's just most of the commenters here showing ignorance or ableism by suggesting the two are equivalent.
I'm not saying otherwise - my comment reaffirms this. There are two separate things going on here -
- You can buy a reasonable wheelchair for moving people relatively short distances across flat surfaces for less than $1000. E.g those used in hospitals and for the partially mobile.
- You cannot currently buy a reasonable self propelled wheelchair for full time use for less than $1000 (give or take the manufacturer in the article).
