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by mcarrano 3319 days ago
Millions of people have some degree of hearing loss. Not all hearing loss requires a hearing aid but I have been wearing hearing aids since second grade.

My very first hearing aid was a "behind the ear" model and it was very uncomfortable when I also wore glasses. The technology then was not great as it simply just amplified sound. Further, it was very visible which made me conscious about my disability.

Later in high school, I moved to an "in the canal" model. This was less visible to others and the technology was a bit better. The hearing aid would be abel to help filter out background noise which made hearing people in loud settings easier.

My current pair of hearing aids are also "in the canal" but it does a much better job filtering background noises, can be environment aware to automatically adjust volume. There are models that even have bluetooth support.

I wrote an article several years ago on what I would like to see a future hearing aid be like: https://michaelcarrano.com/blog/google-should-develop-a-hear...

One thing that isn't talked about much, to my knowledge, is that no insurance will cover the cost of hearing aids. Good hearing aids are not cheap, the model I currently have cost somewhere around $8,000 for my pair.

2 comments

> no insurance will cover the cost of hearing aids

Is this is ridiculous and unreasonable as it sounds to me?

Yes, it is. What is also really nuts is that insurance will cover cochlear implants. I mean it's cool that they do, but my friend explained it to me that the implants are a medical procedure and the hearing aids are classified as a "luxury item" or some such. The brutal and insulting part to the story is that he found this out because his daughter had cancer, and she lost her hearing due to the chemo therapy, which means that she was forced to lose her hearing due to medical procedures.
Maybe. Most health insurances don't cover glasses either.
i live in austria. for my current pair was mostly (50-75%? i can't remember) paid by my (public) insurance and the rest was covered by an organization for helping working people with hearing loss.