If you watched the Paralympics last summer, you may have seen the prosthetic devices that some athletes there depended on, like running blades for sprinting and upper limb prostheses for paddling or skiing. 

For those competitive athletes, sponsorships and sometimes charitable organizations help defray the costs of the devices. But for many people with disabilities, paying for the equipment they need just to go for a jog or shoot hoops with their kids in the driveway is out of reach.

“Most insurance will cover a prosthesis for everyday walking,” explained Maggie Baumer, A04, an advocate for people with limb loss and limb difference. Yet using an everyday prosthesis for something like jogging or basketball can cause injury, and many commercial insurers don’t pay for people to have a second, specialized device like a running blade. 

Baumer advocates for state and federal legislation that ensures equity for people who wear prosthetics and orthotics. One of the biggest projects she takes part in is an initiative called So Every Body Can Move, which seeks insurance coverage for prosthetics and orthotics specifically designed for physical activity, which can cost $5,000 to $50,000 out of pocket.

Keeping people with limb loss from taking part in sports and exercise is discriminatory, Baumer argues, and it makes little financial sense. Considering the clear data that exercise can improve both physical and mental health and stave off expensive diseases such as Type 2 diabetes, “having access to physical activity will prevent more costly conditions in the long run,” Baumer said. “Why aren’t these things covered?”

Legislators seem to agree. In three years, the initiative has helped pass eight state laws. 

The cause is near to Baumer’s heart because exercising helped her get through the mental and physical challenges of her own amputation. “It’s personal work,” she said. “I know for myself and my own recovery, being physically active was so important.”

Twelve years ago, Baumer was living a life that some would envy, working as a young lawyer in New York City. But that life—working long hours, sharing an apartment with a revolving door of roommates—wasn’t really making her happy.

“It was kind of a difficult time, a soul-searching time for me,” she said. “I wasn’t sure that I had chosen the right path.”

Then one night, she got home late and realized she was locked out. She managed to get into the building but not her apartment. That’s when she saw the trash chute. She peeked in and could see what looked like a clear slide into the lit basement. From there, she would have access to a courtyard and her unlocked apartment window.

“I sometimes wonder if that light had not been on, my life might’ve taken a totally different course,” she said.

She decided to go for it and climbed in. But when she was almost into the basement, her hand slipped into a hole, which turned out to be a trash compactor. It quickly clamped down on her left arm like a vice.

When firefighters got Baumer out, her arm was almost severed. For nearly a month, she was in and out of the hospital as doctors tried to save her hand. In the end, her arm had to be amputated below the elbow. 

She moved back in with her parents in western Massachusetts for the recovery, which was slow and hard. But strangely, it was also a chance to reevaluate.

“Even in the hospital I started thinking, ‘OK, now I really have to figure out what I’m going to do with my life,’” she said. “And it’s hard to believe, maybe, but even then, I started seeing it as an opportunity. Like, now I have to invest in myself and figure out what’s going to be the best path for me.”

She decided not to go back to New York and not to go back to the law. But she wasn’t sure what she would do for work. That’s when she met Mike Benning. Benning had also lost his arm and was a peer mentor for other amputees. Seeing someone who was a happy, whole person with a prosthetic arm “was a real pivotal moment for me,” Baumer said. “Nothing was holding him back.”

Peer mentoring seemed like a potential career for her, too: Baumer had majored in psychology at Tufts and even worked for two years as a mental health counselor in the psychiatric unit of a hospital before opting for law school. She started a support group for people with limb loss and became a certified mentor with the Ampower program, a peer-to-peer network designed to empower people affected by amputation or limb difference.

She took a job as a business development manager at the local branch of Hanger Clinic, a national provider of orthotic and prosthetic patient care and services. As an employee, she had ready access to the prosthetics she needed to be physically active. One device she uses has detachable end pieces for different activities. “There is a round, flat piece for yoga, so I can lean on it,” she explained. “I like to ski, so I have another attachment that I use to hold onto the ski pole. If I’m doing a workout with weights, I have a third attachment that I can use to grab onto a dumbbell and hold it.” 

At the same time, she invested in her mental health, taking an improv class and singing lessons and joining a women’s speaking group. “I really embraced that growth period of just trying out lots of different things to figure out what was going to make me happiest,” she said. 

She started doing advocacy work on the boards of the Trauma Survivors Network and the American Trauma Society and became board president for the National Association for the Advancement of Prosthetics and Orthotics.

In January of 2024, she took on her current job—one she proposed—as Hanger’s leader of enterprise patient advocacy. She meets with legislators across the country, testifying about the need for coverage alongside others with limb loss, including a firefighter whose running regimen got him in shape to return to work and a 10-year-old boy who lost his leg to cancer but was still able to run and play basketball because of a donated running blade. 

Other legislation Baumer and other advocates have successfully fought for includes expanded Medicare coverage for microprocessor knee technology, a type of hydraulic prosthesis that uses sensors to continuously monitor the user’s movement and adjust the angle and stiffness of the knee, which is especially helpful on uneven terrain.

Through the Hanger Institute for Clinical Research and Education, “we’ve been able to show that the technology actually reduces falls and injuries, and improves overall outcomes for people who use it,” she said. Now that Medicare will cover it for more people, she’s expecting large national payers will follow.

“My dream would be to have ‘medical necessity’ more broadly defined, so that it’s more realistic to real life,” she said. She herself most often wears a silicone restoration prosthesis that was modeled after her right arm. “A lot of times silicone restoration is not covered because it’s viewed as cosmetic,” she said. But to her it is important for her well-being. “It’s part of my body. It’s part of my body image. It’s part of who I am.”

With the legislation she’s promoting, she hopes lawmakers, and society as a whole, are beginning to recognize that people with limb loss or difference are just like everyone else—a few are amazing athletes, but most are just average people with typical wants and needs, and that’s OK. 

“In recent years, there’s been a lot more coverage of things like the Paralympic Games and seeing all these people overcome big obstacles, which is wonderful,” she said. “It’s wonderful to be inspired and to be the person inspiring. But I don’t think we should pressure people to feel like they can only be accepted if they’re viewed as a hero. You could just be a person with limb loss, a regular person who has gone through this experience that’s really hard.” 

And for them, she said, being able to go for a hike or a swim shouldn’t be too much to ask.