How New Biden Rules Could Make It Easier To Buy Hearing Aids Or Fix Your Phone

The same thing could be said about the readers people buy at the drugstore. But for people who's choice it is to buy cheap readers or go without, they choose the cheap readers every time.

But the readers don’t damage eyes. Put an amplifier in that is too strong for your ears and you aren’t smart enough to know when to not wear it and you’re just asking for someone to destroy or damage their hearing.

If the government really wanted to do something about the cost of hearing aids they could actually change the tax laws to let you write off the full cost of hearing aids and other durable medical equipment on taxes or maybe actually give reasonable reimbursement to the people who do the hearing evaluations. The problem with hearing aids is you have several dispensers with a large lobby who throw tons of cash at legislators (what I am sure is going on with this new push!) and they just throw a widget at people that often times is way overpriced and not properly fit or appropriate but it’s what the consumer wanted to buy. I see this crap all the time as an audiologist and it pisses me off to be quite honest. I have had patients who spent 20-30k on hearing aids over decades from some high school GED person who went and got a dispensing license and fit them with hearing aids that were never appropriate for their hearing loss, would never help their hearing loss, and sold to them at 2-3 times what any reputable audiologist would have ever charged them. Maybe the government should actually do something about those types of folks that give hearing healthcare a bad name. Ok I’m getting off my soapbox now. SPC Kevin Ford

MAJ (Join to see) - I agree that our whole funding of the medical system is ... sub optimal. Even writing off taxes isn't going to fix anything. The people who we are talking about likely don't have sufficient tax liability to even make that worth it (think retirees on social security).