Home Repair Giants Eye Do-it-Yourself Hip Replacements

HOLLYWOOD, Florida.  When Roy and Elsie Switzler retired to this booming city on the east coast of Florida two years ago, they looked forward to spending their golden years at the greyhound tracks and jai alai frontons favored by many other senior citizens.  What they didn’t count on was the long waits they have endured in order to gain access to top-quality medical care.

“I bet on Sparky ’cause he’s cute.”

“Everybody down here’s falling apart,” says Roy.  “I had to wait six months for a hernia operation, and even then I’m not sure the doctor was 100% American.”

“Where’d you go to medical school?”

So when Elsie was told she’d have to wait more than a year for a much-needed hip replacement, Roy–a former union sheet metal worker–took action.  “I went down to Home Depot and talked to the people in the Do-It-Yourself department.  They were very knowledgeable, and they had a great selection of replacement joints in a variety of colors,” he says.  “Including avocado green, my favorite,” Elsie chimes in.

“I got a terrific deal on heart stents!”

Home repair giants such as Home Depot and Lowe’s are moving aggressively into the gaps in America’s health care system, providing the same sort of self-help advice, materials and tools that fueled their rapid growth in the home repair sector.  “We see DIY (do-it-yourself) healthcare as an industry where there’s a lot of upside,” says Nigel Susser of AB Griswold Securities, “if they can just figure out what to do with the used body parts.”

“Best way to cut through that joint is with a tile saw.”

Home body repair is permitted in most states because state medical licensure laws generally do not prohibit intra-family or self-care.  “Courts give people a lot of leeway when they’re touching their own bodies,” says Wilson Ross, a specialist in health law at Roman Hruska School of Law in Omaha, Nebraska.  “Otherwise, Playboy Magazine would have gone out of business years ago.”

As for Elsie, she’s recovering nicely from Roy’s first operation, and is in fact thinking of allowing him to try his hand at something a bit more delicate.  “We picked up a Cosmetic Surgery for Dummies book at a yard sale last week,” she says.  “Did you know you can do a face lift with just a glue gun and a soldering iron?”