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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?"
Most insurance plans do not cover purchases of hearing aids.
/.'s 10 Millionth
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!
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.
It's like this for everything. We had a baby 1.5 years ago. He wouldn't breastfeed so my wife rented a hospital grade pump to do the hard work.
Our insurance didn't cover it 100% because it wasn't "medically necessary" (they'd rather you use formula) and it would have been around $125/month out of pocket for us.
We told the medical equipment company we didn't have insurance and suddenly the price was just under $60/month. What does that mean? They overcharge the insurance companies by at least 3x what their actual costs are because they can.
Our insurance companies aren't exactly the problem. It's the companies that the insurance companies pay. They're robbing us all blind.
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!
I have a bill here from LabCorp. Price before insurance: $327.60 (for some routine bloodwork.) Price after insurance "adjustments": $14.88. So it's not just that they overcharge, it's that they deliberately overcharge the uninsured who have no idea what anything should cost.
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
"... 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
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.
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.