Hearing Aids -- seriously

I am going to mention this, even though I have no experience personally, my BIL has cochlear implants. Some cell phones and some hearing aids work together so you can hear the phone through the hearing aid. My BIL has a setting so the hearing aids are off except the phone still rings and he can hear it in his implant. My sister calls him!

 

Hearing aids were a virtual monopoly for a LONG time. And the markup was, and often still is, bordering on immoral.

But just recently the requirement for a "prescription" was removed so the prices are slowly coming down......and the availability is going up.

However, it depends on what kind of hearing loss you have and how BAD it is.
I think that a decent one can be had for about $500 each......but that will be somewhat of a gamble.

If a doctor knows that you know.......he might suddenly find a much lower priced one.......that isn't attached to your cell phone and doesn't get instructions from a satellite.

I'm about to take this plunge too but the first "doctor" I saw didn't seem to want to discuss the possibility that I might have a treatable condition and just shuffled me off to the hearing test. I didn't go back to get a price quote.

 

my dad got his at costco. he was reasonably happy with them. i think they were $1,600., but they have a few different levels.
for basic mild hearing loss, they are probably fine. he still couldnt hear the tv unless it was at full volume, or conversations at the dinner table.
they had replaceable batteries which he struggled with, and he could adjust them very well because of the fine controls on the aid.

i just got phonak m90r at massachusetts eye and ear hospital, it's the only brand they sell. top model and $5,600.
of course, you have to have a full medical check by an ear nose and throat doc to make sure there isnt an underlying hearing problem causing the loss.
i looked at a lot of stuff on line, but wasnt comfortable buying and returning until i found what i needed.

these are suprisingly more comfortable than i expected. after one day, i didnt even know they were in.

they are small, behind the ear with speaker in the air. they have a phone app for program control, stream music and phone calls, and are rechargeable.
they are expensive, but i decided sometimes you get what you pay for. my wife, children, friends and i are very happy.

 

I am on my second set of hearing aids, the first from an doctor's office, the second from Costco. The first set cost about $3,000. When I needed new one the doctor's audiologist said I needed better ones at $6,000. After careful research, I got a full featured set at $2600 (one of their more expensive options) that have now been serving me well for 4 years. About a year ago, I felt they were not working as well at the had been. Costco retested my hearing, said I didn't need new ones, thoroughly cleaned the one's I have and they were back to like new performance.

Costco hearing staff don't work on commission and do an excellent job. Might an independent audiologist tweak the settings more carefully? Maybe, but I am very satisfied with Costco.

Mine are Rexton, Costco also carries Phonak and ReSound.

 

Huh?

Oh.
Right....
SERIOUSLY.
I'm probably going to have to get some very soon (tinnitus)....but I'm waiting for my CFO to force this decision.
Every time she mentions it I grab my car keys and remind her that these little gems are on sale at SAM's for the low....low....LOW price of about $1,500.

Apiece.

After my 10th submarine patrol my hearing started to decline steadily....despite the fact that I assiduously wore hearing protection whenever I fired a weapon, which when I traded poopie suits and sneakers in for combat boots and an EXW pin - happened regularly.
Of course.....80's rock and summers cutting grass quasi commercially probably didn't help things....

I qualify for free last-gen (behind the ear) aids but for now I only have trouble hearing my CFO and little girl babies, and my service related disfigurement hasn't plagued me enough to visit the VA and slay the paper monster.....and I have bigger plans for TriCare when I'm all the way retired.


Be warned.
Many people who buy hearing aids wind up not wearing them - or being dissatisfied with them when they do.

Research....Research....Research.
3 best places to buy hearing aids online - Clark Howard

 

thats what i read to, but i'm not sure why. one possibility is that they wait too long, and if your old and senile, it's hard to learn new things

 

I wear mine courtesy of the Veterans Administration. Hearing loss was determined to be service-connected upon retirement. My current set is amazing and really helps with having conversations in noisy places. I'm waiting for a better pair of Bluetooth versions to be made available. I hear complaints from friends about connection troubles.

 

My dad uses the neck pendant, which picks up sound at the pendant and transmits it wirelessly via the neck loop to the earpieces. The earpieces also work normally without the pendant, but the pendant gets better sound.

Plus, the pendant can connect via BT to the cell phone, to a transmitter box plugged in to the TV audio jack, or to a remote microphone. The reduced number of digital <--> audio conversions lead to better sound quality and reduced interference pickup. And the rest of us can adjust the TV speaker volume independently of the BT-> hearing aid path. Or even turn our sound off while dad still hears it just fine, reducing in-room distractions when he goes into serious channel surfing mode. The cell phone BT connection works better than the older magnetic phone to hearing aid system, at least for him.

However, this is on the expensive Phonak product. I don't know how well more affordable products perform at this.

The one downside is that dad isn't computer savy, having expected himself to pass away long ago before computers became necessary. Thus he has considerable difficulty recovering when the BT connections are lost, and will panic call anyone or everyone on his phone list. But it was never anything that teenage grandchildren couldn't fix within seconds.

 

A good audiologist can help you hear better no matter how much you spend on the gear.

A great audiologist and a flush budget? There are a few musicians still on tour only because their audiologists haven't retired yet.

 

Sadly a lot of medical equipment is an expensive scam.

I don't need hearing aids yet. But I'm sad to hear (no pun intended ) that they are so expensive.
My mother as she got older and sicker, needed more and more "aids". Walkers, canes, etc, etc. I was always shocked at the cost. Equipment that was akin to scooters and other things you could buy at toy store, for 1/4th the cost, because it was made and sold as a medical product was 4 times the cost. It was/is ridiculous to me what a folding walker costs.

Now I know hearing aids are a multi-thousand dollar cost.
That just seems ridiculous. In this day and age, the circuitry and technology is not any more advanced then things we see in countless products that DON'T cost thousands of dollars.
Hard for me to believe an affordable hearing aid couldn't be produced and offered to the public. Hearing aides IMO shouldn't be the same cost as a used car or a substantial down payment on a new one.

 

wait until you're 65!

medicare just sent me an offer for the same aids i just purchased for $5,600., for $3,600.!

 

Did you miss the post I made in this thread ?
There IS hope.

 

it's like toyota infotainment, they hang on with everything they've got until you pry their cold dead fingers off of your wallet

 

how come no one complains about glasses? two pieces of glass and some molded plastic

 

What? I've been around big-o-motors long enough to read lips...and sign language.

 

Hope?
I don't know, I just feel like medical accessories, are usually desired based on a tangible physical need. So in my idealistic way of thinking, we should strive to produce and provide them at as cheap a cost as possible.
Recently did some Christmas shopping. Just seems ridiculous, that I can walk into the toy department and buy my nephew a remote controlled vehicle, that goes in infinite directions, at variable speeds, stops, starts, turns, flashes lights, honks a horn, and has a rechargeable lithium battery, all for less than $70.
But if I want a device that simply amplifies sound?
Or something as simple as a folding walker?
Or god forbid a toilet seat extender, I'm going to pay an exorbitant price, that IMO goes way beyond the materials and technology involved in creating that product.
Just seems that we go to the most vulnerable portion of our society, the sick and injured and elderly, and then make things tougher on them, by making needed equipment very expensive.

 

I do complain...if you haven't noticed.
It's also ridiculous.
For less than $40...often less than $20, I can get a nice frame, in a pair of over the counter readers.
But if I get a prescription pair of glasses, almost duplicate clone frames, will cost 100's of dollars.

I realize that having lenses made to prescription, as opposed to a over the counter fixed strength is going to change the cost of the lenses. But IMO there's no reason the frames for glasses should be so expensive.

 

there's more to a hearing aid than you may realize. just the size alone is intimidating. they not only amplify sound (that's all the cheapo's do) they block or reduce extranious sounds.
they clarify sound they are programmable for different situatons such as restaurant, gatherings, sporting events and etc.
they stream tv, music and phone calls.
and in that tiny little package, they fit a rechargeable battery, microphine, led, and multifunctional switch.
it's impressive technology, but still overpriced

 

Sure, in the really early day's people with hearing problems often had to carry portable radio sized boxes around with them. Before then, you could put a horn up to your ear.
Even though I realize today's hearings aides ARE complicated pieces of equipment, I still think the technology to cost is WAY out of line.

Again for less than $100, I can walk into almost any electronics department and buy electronic marvels, in the form of cordless ear sets, that sync with Bluetooth, noise cancel and often allow me to answer and converse over my phone with a built in mic.
So with all due respect to what the best hearing aides are built to do? I'm not so impressed.
You can just call me flat out wrong if you wish. A big part of it is purely philosophical. When it comes to providing for the elderly, sick, deteriorating, infirmed. I think we should strive to keep prices of equipment lower and accessible.

A large part of this rant, and this frustration does come from my years of caring for my mother as she became more and more ill. If you paid out of pocket for the equipment? I was always shocked at what the simplest items cost. If insurance picked it up or even a portion of it, it seemed someone was making a lot of money somewhere.

I'm not denying anyone the right to make a profit. But with a lot of this "stuff", the end cost vs. what the product tangibly IS seems way out of balance to me.
But maybe I'm wrong. .