Is ACL/knee-scope recovery gear FSA or HSA eligible?

By VerifiedCareData · How we check. Last checked August 29, 2026. Part of the full ACL / knee-arthroscopy recovery checklist. No affiliate links on this page.

You're probably not on Medicare for this one. This surgery skews younger, more often employer-insured — per AAOS's own data, female athletes tear their ACL at 2 to 8 times the rate of males, from pivoting and cutting sports like soccer, basketball, and volleyball. So the coverage question that actually matters is FSA/HSA, not Medicare eligibility. Crutches are individually named as an eligible expense in IRS Publication 502; everything else on this checklist is plausible under the same publication's general rule, but not guaranteed by name. Medicare data is kept below only as a national price benchmark — for scale, not because this audience is likely billing Medicare.

The item-by-item breakdown

Crutches are the one item Publication 502 names directly. Everything else on this checklist falls under its broader definition: "the costs of equipment, supplies, and diagnostic devices needed" to treat a diagnosed condition — a real basis, but a general one, not a guarantee. State plainly which is which, rather than implying every item here is equally certain.

Does Medicare cover a knee brace after ACL surgery?

We can't say whether Medicare covers it, in either direction. A hinged post-op ROM brace's closest real billing match is L1832 or L1833 ("Knee orthosis, adjustable knee joints, positional orthosis, rigid support, prefabricated") — both real, current HCPCS Level II codes. But neither is one of the 68 Medicare equipment codes this site tracks. Those cover canes/crutches/walkers, commodes, bath/toilet safety, hospital beds, patient lifts, seat lifts, and manual wheelchairs. Braces are not in that group. So we have no Medicare fee or claim count for L1832 or L1833, and we won't guess. Ask your DME supplier or plan whether either code is billable for your specific situation.

The corrected crutches-utilization fact

Medicare's own crutches code, E0114 ("Crutches underarm, other than wood, adjustable or fixed, pair, with pads, tips and handgrips"), is covered with a doctor's prescription — a fee of $57.17–$88.73 a pair, with 44,541 services billed nationally in 2024. It's tempting to call that the highest-volume DME code Medicare tracks — an earlier version of this site made that claim, and it was wrong. Checked against all 68 codes this site tracks: a standard manual wheelchair (K0001) leads at 1,305,390 services, a folding walker (E0143) is third at 508,460, and a commode (E0163) is sixth at 139,220. E0114 ranks 14th overall.

What is true, and the claim actually worth repeating: E0114 dominates the narrower crutches-family codes specifically — 44,541 claims against a combined 1,411 for every other crutch code (E0110–E0113, E0116, E0117) this site tracks, roughly 31.6 times more. That's a real, verified fact about which kind of crutch Medicare actually pays for most — it's just a narrower claim than "the most common DME item," and we're stating it that way here.

Why FSA/HSA, not Medicare, is the coverage story here

AAOS's own patient-education page states it directly: female athletes experience ACL injuries at rates 2 to 8 times higher than males, with the classic injury mechanism being pivoting, cutting, or jumping in sports like soccer, basketball, volleyball, and football. That's a younger, more often employer-insured population than this site's knee- and hip-replacement guides, whose readers skew Medicare-adjacent. If you're outside that pattern — reading this for yourself or a family member who is on Medicare — the crutches fact above still applies to you directly; the rest of this checklist simply isn't something Medicare's fee schedule was built to price.