Who Gets to Fix Your Wheelchair? Hannah Henriksen on Wheelchair Right to Repair

You own your car. You can take it to any mechanic in town. You own your phone, and more and more, you can fix it yourself.

But if you use a power wheelchair? Too often only one company is allowed to fix it. And then you wait. Weeks. Months. Sometimes longer.

That's the wheelchair right to repair fight, and it's the heart of my conversation with Hannah Henriksen, President of Respect America. Their new film asks a simple question: if it's your property and your body, why isn't the repair your decision?

Watch the full episode with Hannah Henriksen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3kAVJ-UG_U

Who Is Hannah Henriksen?

Hannah grew up in California, so in her words, she knows "a bit about having government overreach in your life."

She came into the liberty movement in 2021 by what she calls a twist of fate. In a job interview back in 2020, the interviewer asked how she felt about libertarianism. Her answer? She didn't even know what that was. The office shared space with a few nonprofits, she started doing part-time work for them, and she loved it.

She started working for Respect America in 2021, helped rebuild it from the ground up with a new mission, vision and logo, and then the board asked her to run it. She's been leading it for three and a half years now.

The Philosophy of Human Respect: The Rules We Learned on the Playground

Respect America is built on what Hannah calls the philosophy of human respect. And it starts somewhere every one of us has been: the playground.

"You don't hurt people, you don't take their stuff," Hannah said. "You live your life, you want to be happy."

Simple. So what goes wrong? "As we get older, we start to make exceptions." Politics. HOAs. Somebody decides they know how to run your life better than you do, and we go along with it because they're the expert.

I couldn't help but flash back to 2020. "Trust the experts." I was in Philadelphia at the time, and we watched society get turned upside down on that line.

Hannah's take was fair. Sure, we all lean on people who know more than we do. But "they may be an expert, but they've been wrong once or twice in their life."

Show, Then Tell: Why Stories Beat Stats

Here's where Respect America flips the script on most of the liberty movement. Most of us want to tell, tell, tell.

Respect America does the opposite: show, then tell. They share real people's stories of coercion, theft and violence first, then explain why it happened and how to stop it from happening again. Their film on Jonny McCoy, a South Carolina lawyer who was wrongfully arrested, has been seen by more than 2 million people. Hannah says they've now told stories from about 30 states.

Her favorite proof it works: under one of their first articles, the first comment came from a huge Trump fan saying this should never happen again. Right below it? A huge Bernie Sanders fan saying the same thing.

"People love a story," Hannah said. "Everything we do is storytelling." Lots of great liberty groups write white papers, briefs and model legislation, she said. "But they're missing out on the storytelling."

I teach the same thing to my sales teams. Facts matter, but feelings are what drive the decision. And the two most powerful emotions are fear and love.

Thomas Quiter and the $100,000 Wheelchair

That brings us to the new film, Who Gets to Fix Your Wheelchair?, featuring friend of the show Thomas Quiter. Thomas first joined me back in 2021.

Thomas has osteogenesis imperfecta, which causes his bones to break, constantly. Hannah says he's had over 1,000 bone breaks in his roughly 40 years, and he's been in a power wheelchair for most of his life.

Now here's the wheelchair right to repair problem in plain English:

• The price. Hannah called these chairs "stupid expensive... like 80 to $100,000." That's a brand-new car. That's more than a Tesla.
• The repair lock. Because the chairs end up subsidized by insurance and disability benefits, "there's only one company" that can repair them, Hannah said. Go anywhere else, and you either can't get into the system or it just can't be fixed.
• The wait. The result is people stuck in their homes, sometimes for years, because they simply can't move around.
• The rules. Even working chairs come with heavy restrictions. Hannah said a lot of them "aren't technically supposed to leave their homes."
• No modifications. You can't adjust the chair to fit your body, even though you spend almost your whole life in it.

Hannah's 6'3" and picked her car because she's tall. (I'm 6'5", so I get it.) That's a freedom most of us take for granted. Power chair users don't get it.

Who should get to fix your wheelchair? Watch the full conversation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3kAVJ-UG_U

Open-Source Wheelchairs Built in Shop Class

So what is Thomas doing about it? He started his own nonprofit, the Mobility Independence Foundation, and works with high school and college shop classes to build open-source power wheelchairs.

Open-source means you can modify the chair "to fit your body better," Hannah said, and actually be comfortable in it. And it means the people using the chairs aren't stuck waiting on one company to fix them.

And Thomas keeps his sense of humor through all of it. One of his favorite lines: he runs better than the government.

Who's Standing in the Way of Wheelchair Right to Repair?

I asked Hannah straight up. Is it the manufacturers? The insurers? Medicaid rules? The lobbyists?

Her honest answer: "I think it's a combination of everything." She was upfront that she's not the expert here and that most of what she's learned came from Thomas and her own research.

And that's what makes this issue so powerful. Right, left and center look at it and say the same thing: this is bonkers. I can walk into a dealership and pick from a dozen cars. Thomas can't even pick who fixes his chair.

A Long Game: Changing a Culture

How does Respect America keep people engaged when there's no quick win? They keep telling stories. New films, new articles, and two more films just shot.

"This is a long game," Hannah said. "This is changing a culture."

I shared one of my own: a Beach Boys-loving political science professor, a die-hard Democrat, who became one of my good friends in college because music was our common language. Find the thing that unites you, then talk. The Michael Scott win-win-win.

Where to Find Respect America and the Mobility Independence Foundation

Respect America is active on social media, and you can join their email list on their site.

• Respect America: respectamerica.org
• Share your story: respectamerica.org/share-your-story
• Mobility Independence Foundation (Thomas Quiter): themif.org

Thomas couldn't join us for this one. He's going through a rough stretch health-wise, so please keep him in your thoughts and prayers.

Watch the whole conversation and tell me in the comments: who should get to fix your wheelchair?

Watch the full episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3kAVJ-UG_U

Educated. Enlightened. Informed.