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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?"
I'm sure the average American household is well above that.
They may be counting single-occupancy dwellings as "households," but the important part is, probably a great many of the people who require hearing aids are either already on fixed income or are close to retirement.
And if there is a price bubble, the Chinese will be right there to correct it.
TFA claims the ones we're paying $2,000 for are already being manufactured in China for $100. The problem is that a hearing aid is technically a durable medical device. Many people prefer to consult with a professional to get the right model, correct fit, etc., and some states actually forbid hearing aids being sold by mail or by anyone other than a licensed professional. So that kinda puts a damper on the grey market for many people.
Breakfast served all day!
An article on how expensive hearing aids are from a hearing aid company that advertises their low costs.
GENERATION 9882463: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig & add a random number to the generation.
Capitalism at its finest.... people have needs... you have answers.... gouge em till they stop asking! Or gouge their insurance and drive rates up for everyone.
CAPITALISM DOES NOT BELONG IN MEDICINE. SINGLE PAYER, NON PROFIT. DO IT.
And yet every similar device that isn't a hearing aid has come way down in price in that same time frame. The difference is that the FDA won't butt out of hearing aids.
This is one of the biggest reasons why social security is in trouble.
This is so wrong! You have bought into the shell game and misdirection that so many politicians have been leading. The Social Security trust fund holds over $2.5 trillion. Most of this has been lent to other under funded government projects. That's the problem. We don't want to pay back the the money we borrowed from the Social Security system and instead say the system is broken. It isn't. The systems is fully self funded. We've just been treating the huge Social Security surpluses as a giant piggy bank for so long that we find it easier to say Social Security is broken than pay back the money we stole!
"... obviously wasn't as good as what you could pick up in Europe. I don't know what they paid for the hearing aid, but it seems to me like something funny is going on."
I would say that the "something funny" is just raw American ignorance. There's lots of higher-tech products and infrastructure in other countries. But we're brainwashed to believe that it's not, by definition, possible for America to be behind the curve. In many ways.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
Okay, that out of the way, let's look at "Health Care is a right." Based on your argument I think you really did mean right in the sense outline above. I disagree with that stance. Health care is a liberty and not a right. The government can't get in the way of a person seeking it but is not obliged to provide it. Health care is a thing used by an individual. It is not right for the government to take resources from everyone in the form of taxes, and then use them to provide resources to individuals, even if it's to each individual. If groups of people want to band together voluntarily for that purpose, that's great. In fact, at the fundamental level that's what insurance is.
Since you bring up health care costs, let me posit one reason why such inefficiencies abound. And let me acknowledge right now that I don't have any data on this as it is a hypothesis. It seems strange that health care is so intimately tied to employment in the US. It's actually a weird relic from WWII when there were strong wage controls in the US. How do you compete for employees when you can't just pay them more? Give them the health care that congress forgot to include in the controls! These days the reason health care is tied to employment is that it's deductible for the company and never counts as income to be taxed for the recipient. That means that the recipient is essentially paying less for the insurance because he gets out of paying those taxes. That amounts to a massive government subsidy on health insurance. Worse, it pretty much guarantees a large demand since everybody's going to buy the insurance if the government's footing part of the bill. Inflated demand combined with subsidies is not a recipe for efficiency.
P.S. I split the posts because I suspect this is an unpopular opinion to hold here and anticipate being modded down, but I figured the definition part might see the light of day and be of some use.
Here, we have coverage for hearing aids from the government. However, there is restrictions on the make, models and types of hearing aids we can pick from. There is a list reviewed every two years or so. Usually, the government make a deal with few manufacturers after asking them to answer to a public RFP (Request for proposals). They set guidelines and the manufacturers must bid as well on a 6 years maintenance plan for their own devices. Those with the lowest prices meeting the requirements for each category win. The drawbacks of this approach is the devices are always end-of-line models. If you want to pick one not on the list, you have to pay it in full. This permit most individuals with hearing loss to have access to hearing aids devices at the price of having access to low-end models only.
Achille Talon
Hop!
Even babies are getting older these days.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Hearing aids are regulated by the FDA which is why it costs $5k or so in paperwork.
Here is capitalism. It looks like a hearing aid but it is really a sound amplifier so it is not regulated by the FDA. It costs $70.
http://www.amazon.com/Voxom-Hearing-Aid-Sound-Amplifier/dp/B005AM7S3K/ref=sr_1_9?ie=UTF8&qid=1315622221&sr=8-9
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
Fundamental to the concept of rights is reciprocity. In other words, if you call "A" a right but "A" involves violating someone else's rights, then "A" cannot be a right. Health Care can not exist without someone providing it through their labor. If that someone isn't paid for his labor, then in most cases he's doing it involuntarily: he's a slave to you. You have no right to enslave someone. If that someone is paid by another party without that party's permission (i.e. through taxes) then that party is being enslaved to the extent that the fruit of his labors is taken against his wishes. Again, you do not have the right to enslave someone.
In America, medical care is expensive in part because of fascist-syndicalist laws restricting supply. The solution is neither socialism nor the status quo, it is freedom.
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isn't wanting something cheaper just as greedy as wanting something more expensive?
If I demand a $5 hearing aid how is that less greedy than charging $5k? Value is set by the individuals on both sides of a transaction.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
A regulation-free medical industry is one where you get loads of useless homoeopathic and similar remedies, and there is no guarantee that they will work as described or be safe.