[cushpush]

Plans for open-source hearing aids have also been developed and released, like happened on HN a few years ago (amazing work by the gentleman @zdw) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20604566. So, I think like someone else said, this is gov't catching up to the fact that market alternatives exist and are undercutting an industry that has celebrated regulatory shielding for a long time. Really, the hardware is less complex as time goes on, right? It makes sense that low-cost alternatives will bring quality up for consumers and prices down for consumers. Question, Hearing aids are considered medical gear and therefore the regulation?

[14]

I always was told that the heating aids need to match the user. By that it means heating is tested and what frequency loss the patient has the hearing aid will then take that frequency and alter it to one the client can hear. It’s not a matter of higher volume. It seems now however a simple app on a phone could do the hearing test and then match up what the patient needs with an open sourced hearing aid.

[carlmr]

>It seems now however a simple app on a phone could do the hearing test and then match up what the patient needs with an open sourced hearing aid.

I would bet a lot of things could be done by regular people with proper software support. Having licensed gatekeepers raises prices for the service. Since you're excluding a lot of supplierd from the market.

The question is then why gatekeep at all?

With antibiotics for example, abuse and misuse can cause a lot of harm, so having someone gatekeep them, even if this raises the price of service makes sense.

But with a lot of licensed professions we're merely creating an artificial moat that increases prices in a market economy.