Ugly Truth #4

So why do prescription hearing aids cost so much? There are a lot of expenses that go into making the devices cost what they do. There are the obvious costs that have to be covered…like the salaries of the doctors and employees who work at our practice…the light bill…the printer we use… rent, employee benefits, etc. There are also the costs of our professional equipment and software and in this particular industry, like dentistry, those costs are quite significant. There are extra costs when it comes to hearing health care because a hearing aid is literally a miniature computer that has to be waterproof and sweatproof. It has to be able to work in extreme heat and cold, day after day after day… It has to be able to be exposed to all kinds of conditions (ear wax, hair spray, hair dye) and continue to perform acoustically on day 1,000 as it did on day 1. There are a myriad of pieces and parts that go with these tiny computers – the wax traps that protect the speaker in your ear—the speakers themselves, the rubber tips that go over the speakers, microphone seals and covers…. Prescription hearing aids also have multiple chips and specialized dedicated networks for different types of sound processing. Designing these devices and verifying that they work as intended and are effective for people with hearing loss takes literally millions of dollars to bring products to market. Ultimately the people who buy prescription hearing aids are paying for all of this research and development through the price of these devices. This is also why over-the-counter devices are cheaper…they rely on older technology that was already paid for by everyone else, and do not have the latest technology in them, despite what they may advertise. The costs of bringing prescription hearing aids to market are enormous… and this is why hearing aids are so expensive. We are all paying for the product development. When hearing aid company representatives come to our office to discuss their new products, we are not paying for that professional education directly. Those costs again are paid by the people who purchase the hearing aids—me and you.

When people have Medicare Advantage plans that have hearing aid benefits, the devices that are included in these plans are older technology, or less sophisticated technology. Traditional Medicare by law does not cover hearing aids. Advantage plans, in the effort to attract members to their particular plan, often include some “hearing aid benefits.” Just because you have a Medicare Advantage plan, the amount of money allotted by the government for your health care isn’t bigger than the amount in a traditional Medicare plan. What Medicare pays for medical care is already not enough to cover normal physicians doing primary care work. What they pay audiologists is laughable. In some cases, the Advantage plan recipient might pay extra to have hearing health benefits included in their plan. In other plans, hearing care “is included.” So to pay for this, the plan is reducing your benefits elsewhere compared to what Medicare traditionally covers. The quality of these Medicare Advantage plan benefits vary widely. Most of these plans require the plan member to only see specific providers who are willing to provide hearing care at steeply discounted rates.