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Is There a Hearing Aid Price Bubble?
An anonymous reader writes "The price of a pair of hearing aids in the U.S. ranges from $3,000 to $8,000. To the average American household, this is equivalent to 2-3 months of income! While the price itself seems exorbitant, what is even more grotesque is its continuous pace of growth: in the last decade the price of an average Behind the Ear hearing aid has more than doubled. To the present day, price points are not receding — even though most of its digital components have become increasingly commoditized. Is this a hearing aid price bubble?"
You, sir or madam, are ignorant. Most insurance plans don't cover hearing aids. And try to get one of these digital hearing aids through the gummint. Ain't gonna happen.
No sig? Sigh...
Most insurance plans do not cover purchases of hearing aids.
/.'s 10 Millionth
No. Healthcare costs are where they are because the CAPITALISM factor is involved.
With Single Payer Non-Profit, you can expect a 40-50% decrease in total cost to insure. Modeling after Canada's cost/person, a reduction from $1.5TR/250M-people to $1TR/300M-people is possible. That means the 250 million that pay for insurance are paying 1.5 TRILLION a year for shoddy, exclusion rich, insurance when the sum of all Americans, 300 million people, would be paying 1 TRILLION to cover everyone without any exclusions or b.s. trickery.
I've talked to over 40 canadians about how they feel about their single-payer system and NOT A SINGLE ONE agreed with the US-paid-pundits that lie about how canadian's don't like their healthcare. Matter of fact, more than 25% of them laughed when I first asked, knowing that I had been exposed to the US-paid-pundits and required truthful answers.
65? I'm around half that and I'm about ready for a hearing aid. A friend of mine who works on his house more than me needed one about the same age.
Kids, protect your hearing. It sucks to lose the ability to hear people in a crowded room. Especially you crazy maker-types running to the saw to make a few cuts. Get some foam earmuffs, the kind used for shooting, and put them next to the saw. Use em *every* time.
http://www.masturbateforpeace.com/
In big cities it's not uncommon to wait 4-6 hours for an emergency consult, unless you roll in on an ambulance with a severed limb...
We have that in the US too. My medium sized city has a few of the best hospitals in country. Unless you're bleeding severely, giving birth, or having a heart attack you can count on a multi-hour wait at the emergency room. The only different thing from Canada is that patients get to walk out with fat bill. Something minor runs hundreds. Something major costs thousands.
"Liechtenstein is the world's largest producer of sausage casings, potassium storage units, and false teeth."
Yes, it's funny to hear people tell you to watch loud power tools and music until... your hearing is 1/2 gone!
Just curious, the doc says hearing aids only amplify the volume of sounds. I'm only deficient in hearing in a certain small range but it makes talking to certain people (usually women and kids) a chore. Isn't there _something_ that can shift the pitch of a certain frequency into another frequency so I can hear it without amplification?
The more expensive hearing aids have an equalizer which can be tuned. That way, you only amplify the frequency ranges you need. Frequency shifting would be much more complex and really not necessary.
I used to work for a hearing aid company in IT.
The most expensive programmable digital hearing aid with all the options topped out at around $1200. That's the cost to the hearing care professional. So yeah, that hearing aid would turn around and sell for at least 3 to 4 times that.
Also, the company had an extended warranty that we sold to the hearing care professional. Most of them don't turn around and sell that to the customer. Instead, they pay for it themselves and then when a customer brings a hearing aid back they sent it to us for free to fix and they charged the customer for it. It seemed like quite a nice racket. Especially when you consider they also charge for the hearing checkup, fitting, and all of that other usual crap above and beyond what the hearing aid itself cost.
I'm not sure what the rest of the medical device industry looks like, but it wouldn't surprise me if it was fairly similar. I know the markup on my glasses frames is pretty crazy.
The summary wasn't quite accurate. $3000 to $8000 a pair is supposed to be the traditional price.
This story is actually a product marketing newsletter for the company that sells Audicus hearing aids http://www.audicus.com/category/hearing-aids/ which start from $400 a pair.
http://www.mdhearingaid.com/acoustitone_max/ starts at $200 per pair.
The cheapest was http://www.dealextreme.com/p/axon-hearing-aid-v163-4326 Axon Hearing Aid (V163) for about $27 a pair, but they don't seem to adjust to the frequency of the patient's loss.