Posted on 06/13/2017 5:02:03 AM PDT by Kaslin
I'm technically disabled -- but not mentally disabled the way some of my foes on CNN seem to believe I am. No, my disability is hearing loss. In one ear I'm nearly deaf.
I have to turn the TV up so loud the neighbors say they can hear it from their house next door. My friends complain that watching TV with me is like watching Garrett Morris on "Saturday Night Live" shout into the camera to provide news for the hard of hearing.
There are some 30 million Americans like me suffering from severe to moderate hearing loss. Not being able to hear precisely what people are saying is an occupational handicap, for sure.
I also lose my prescription hearing aid at least three or four times a year. These little gizmos are expensive, costing as much as $3,000 (I can't get insurance anymore because of my pre-existing condition of carelessness), and so having access to cheaper over-the-counter hearing devices is an attractive option.
Granted, the non-prescription aids don't work as well, but in a pinch they sure work a lot better than no hearing aid at all. Some of the devices at Walmart are so cheap that they are practically disposable.
Congress will soon vote on a bill called the Over-the-Counter Hearing Aid Act that would allow much easier access to over-the-counter hearing aids. And get this: The bill is bipartisan, sponsored by Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Reps. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) and Joseph Kennedy (D-Mass.). (This may be the first and last time I've ever been on the side of Elizabeth Warren!)
Here's why this bill is important to the health and well-being of millions of Americans like me. According to the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine's report "Hearing Health Care for Adults," more than two-thirds of the 30 million people in the U.S. with hearing loss may benefit from hearing aids but do not use them.
Why don't they? Because they're too expensive. A 2014 report by the Consumer Technology Association finds that the high price for prescription aids is a major barrier to consumers. Prescription hearing aids typically cost $1,000 to $6,000, or about 10 times the cost of OTC aids.
Current law prohibits over-the-counter personal sound amplification performance systems (PSAPs) from making any claim to treat hearing loss. The Food and Drug Administration, which regulates hearing aids, places prohibitions on advertising for these cheaper devices, claiming they don't significantly improve hearing. I can personally attest that PSAPs do help, especially when standing in a crowded room with a lot of ambient noise or talking on the phone.
Under the new law PSAPS could be marketed and sold as a more affordable hearing aid alternative to people with hearing loss. The highest quality prescription hearing aids that are personalized and fitted for each patient and superior in quality would still be available and regulated by the FDA.
This would seem to be a no-brainer. It would drive down prices for all hearing devices by increasing choice and competition. The opponents to the bill are the doctors and the manufacturers of the expensive aids. They are against competition -- of course. It's the same sort of rent-seeking lobbying that taxicab companies use to keep Uber out of cities.
What we have here is a classic case of regulation promoted by the regulated industry in order to keep prices high and keep out cheaper alternatives -- all under the phony guise of "consumer protection."
We now have over-the-counter reading glasses, over-the-counter painkillers and over-the-counter flu medicines. These options don't prevent people from getting prescriptions for heavier drug dosages or more personalized contacts and eyeglasses.
One worry is that this new law will give the FDA additional powers to regulate over-the-counter devices. Conservatives should be arguing that there is no compelling reason for the FDA to be regulating this industry at all. You're not going to die if you get snookered and buy a bad hearing aid.
This should be the first step in a pro-consumer crusade to severely limit FDA regulations on the sale of scores of medical devices and drugs when there is no issue of endangerment. Why does the FDA have to regulate hearing aids, dental and skin care products, Viagra, wheelchairs and so on?
Everyone in Washington, from both parties, keeps saying that they are for "affordable care." Here's one way they can make that a reality for tens of millions of Americans. Is anyone listening?
It’s just another one of the isms.
They tried to sell me a remote volume devise. Not worth the extra $$.
Hubby gets 10% of his Pension check separate, and Income Tax free for his Flight Deck hearing loss. He did comm on the Flight deck. That is the field he also taught.
“our stupidity for loosing our hearing in the first place.”
Not always our stupidity. First 8 years of my time in USAF they put me behind a CRT which was radiating into my brain and told me to write on the glass with a grease pencil. Almost everyone in tactical radar controller career field lost most of their hearing and has a ringing in their ears.
Well, you can protect some hearing loss, but not all. Same with vision loss or the decline of any of our bodily gifts from God. Everything wears out.
Yep, my family members screeched at me for several years, but the real motivator was having a 120 students, mostly female with the higher pitched voices, asking questions I could not hear.
The same rule should apply to Cpap machines for most people with Sleep Apenia. Most patients don’t need some non professional showing them how to use a Cpap machine bringing the cost up even more. FDA is now allowing patients to buy the parts of a CPAP mask without an rx via the internet. Then, when they get the parts, put they can put the parts together and use them. If one can open a door with a key or set a table for lunch or dinner, they can assemble the mask. If they need help, they can pay a small fee to a pharmacist.
FDA has wisely changed safe and easier to use Rx drugs like anti histamines to over the counter drugs, OTC’s. That saves us probably billions of $’s as a nation, when we don’t need to go see a doctor for an Rx for a safe drug. Afrin falls into that category. Immodium is another otc drug that we don’t need to see a doctor to buy. If you need Immodium, you don’t want to travel to a doctors office to get an rx.
Hearing aids should fall into this same category. Have a hearing test and get the results. Then, you should be able to buy a product on line from Costco, Amazon, CVS or where ever that will work based on your results. Then you can use the product.
Some of these devices might need some professional set up. FDA allows pharmacists to give us shots, these professionals could be easily trained to give professional help to people buying the hearing aids from them or for a simple fee at the pharmacy.
There is a positive spin off of making electronic devices and Rx drugs available without an RX and available across the country. That is getting the patients involved in their own health care and weaning them from using a doctor for every minor problem.
Let the free market handle a large % of RX products without an Rx, and we will lower costs for health care at the individual and national levels.
Se my comment above. I have used them and they do not match the tuned hearing aids with the computer on board. They are definitely better than nothing, however, the high quality aids make music sound better and the sounds of nature, like the birds, sound much better.
“It sounds like these devices are the ear equivalent of the $10 drugstore reading glasses that also don’t need a prescription.”
BOL! Like bad mojo, when I turned 40, I started having headaches and in particular when I tried to read something. My RN wife told me to see a Neurologist friend and ask him what was happening.
He asked me when this started happening, and I told him a few months ago and my reading problems. He pulled a drug store set of reading glasses off his desk, handed me them, told me to put them and a medical journal to read a few paragraphs from the journal.
I did, and suddenly I could read. He asked a couple of questions about what I had read, and I passed the test.
He told me to keep the cheap reading glasses and to go to the local chain pharmacy and buy about 6 pairs of the lowest power and to check them out on the reading chart. I asked him why so many pairs. He laughed and said, “You will find out very soon how fast they hide themselves.”
I took his advice. My headaches went away, and after a few days, I knew why he told me to buy 6 pairs of the reading glasses.
Fast forward a few decades, my wife and I have performed the same cheap miracle with our adult children, in laws, nieces and nephews. Their headaches disappeared, and they didn’t need 6’ long arms to read.
I have Sharkey Halo's that have an iPhone app that does just that. Can play with all the settings, volume. Can stream to your ears through your phone. Uses GPS so you can have settings on where you're at (work, home etc...) and it will change when you're at the location.
This law would actually impose unneeded government restrictions on the otc aids. It makes no attempt to lower the thousands of dollars cost of ‘prescription’ aids.
Try setting 3” away from 120mm cannon fire in a vehicle powered by a screaming turbine engine.
You can get them from Chinese companies. It is illegal but you can get them.
Another place is yard sales, people die and they have all this medical equipment. I know people who buy medical devices to give to those who can’t afford them.
Depends, walkers, wheel chairs...we were going to buy an electric wheel chair for a paraplegic in Mexico for almost 3K we got a barely used one for $750.
I didn’t know hearing loss was race based.
Lipo-Flavonoid for the tinnitus.
Exactly!!! And then to get hearing aids jump through a maze of paperwork that dwarfs Franz Kafka’s “The Trial”.
Delta21, Neoliberalnot,
I agree that the hearing aid costs are exorbitant, and that the frustration level on hearing & non hearing folks is high.
But some people are born with the handicap; they never had a chance to avoid noise.
Delta 21 wrote:
“Making beaucoup $$ trumps our stupidity for loosing our hearing in the first place.
Its really eye opening how some treat others with non visible handicaps. I know I need some, too.
I can put up with the consternation from strangers, HELL, I could spend the rest of my life in happy silence if I didnt have to listen to all the idiots in my life, but the family frustration is pushing me very hard.”
How ya figure? "Current law prohibits over-the-counter personal sound amplification performance systems (PSAPs) from making any claim to treat hearing loss. The Food and Drug Administration, which regulates hearing aids, places prohibitions on advertising for these cheaper devices [...] Under the new law PSAPS could be marketed and sold as a more affordable hearing aid alternative to people with hearing loss."
It makes no attempt to lower the thousands of dollars cost of ‘prescription’ aids.
Facilitating greater use of OTC amplifiers will indirectly put downward pressure on the price of prescription aids. I agree that an even better answer is to lower regulations on the latter.
A processor which can handle a one channel, 40 kHz (the Nyquist rate for 20 kHz audio) signal is almost trivia now. If you had Bluetooth for adjustments it would probably need 100 times the processing power of the digital filter and amp alone.
The problem is that audiologists want to keep the hearing aids as a major profit item. Even optometrists have seen the split of their profits from glasses. I still get my expensive progressive lens glasses from them, but I take my prescription (which the optometrist muss give me now) and order my single vision readers and distance glasses online. I tried a set of progressives online but they were not quite right, so I figured the optician earned her money setting those up right. But that is my choice.
“They tried to sell me a remote volume devise. Not worth the extra $$.”
I find it very valuable. Especially while driving.
Sorry, I didn’t hear you the first time. :)
Do these work for you at all?
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