Monday, June 27, 2011

Hearing Aid Makers Continued GREED!

G'day Everyone.

Yep.. the rants and raves are ripping through some of the blog sites lately. That is the complaints about the high cost of hearing aids.
My favorite blogger: RSGeo-007, wrote a good post today: http://rsgeo007.blogspot.com/2011/06/hearing-aids-still-cost-too-much.html.

Yet, a question is always hounding us: why are hearing aids so expensive to make? With the old analog model hearing aids being phased out and digital hearing aids are on the rise (as it has been in the last few years), why is it so expensive?
Are hearing aids registered like a trademark (similar to a factory that makes wonderful drug medicines to help us) that have to be original until the trademark expires and then anyone can copy the hearing aid to become generic and cheap?
Then comes another question: If hearing aids were so beneficial for people with severe hearing loss, why are they not made to be that benefit again and yet audiologists sells to us about the cochlear implants?

Cochlear implants may look cheap for severe hearing loss people but then it's the risky business of surgery and the hope (bigger risk) that your ear/body will accept the CI and work with it. It's the surgery and recovery that makes it very expensive to have the CI.

So comes down to serious questions. Why is CI more risky and expensive to deaf people with severe hearing losses?

Why are hearing aids staying expensive when it's almost cheap to make them, like what RSG said that if you know what you are doing?
Why are hearing aid manufacturers want to be greedy, especially in this time of economic mess? Don't they understand if we, the deaf, don't have the money (not even health or medical insurance), nobody buys their products to use that are made for us?

That is a question being posed today. If hearing aid makers are like the greedy men of Wall Street and the drug companies, then they will find themselves questioned by God later at His judgement seat. Let's hope they can give God a good answer.

Till next post, I'll clue you in.

2 comments:

Xpressive Handz said...

Another question, why is it that you are only allowed 1 hearing aid on the Social Security medical plan, and yet allowed a "pair of glasses"? Just wondering....

northern sydney said...

Thank you so much for writing this. The main reasons are that the manufacturers of hearing aids and the audiologists who dispense hearing aids have a sweetheart deal to keep the cost to the end-user for hearing aids at as high a price as possible. My hearing aids are matched to my long hair and virtually invisible my audiologist was very much like.
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