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If your child broke an arm, you’d get a cast put on. If your mother could no longer walk, you’d get her a wheelchair. So why do millions of people – both young and old – choose not to wear hearing aids when they have hearing problems?
Often, it’s because they can’t afford them. “Many people don’t realize that hearing aids are not covered under Medicare, or under the vast majority of state mandated insurance programs,” says Dr. Sergei Kochkin, executive director of the Better Hearing Institute. Private insurance plan sometimes cover them. But over 70 percent of hearing aid purchases involve no third party payment, so consumers often bear the entire burden.
“Medicare, state insurance programs or private insurers cover canes and crutches and often help people afford glasses, braces on their teeth, cosmetic surgery, Viagra for better sex lives and other solutions to improve quality of life ,” says Kochkin, “but hearing loss is like a neglected orphan in this health care system.”
The average hearing aid costs $1800 and many people require two of them. While 95 percent of people with hearing loss can be helped with hearing aids, only 23 percent currently use them, according to a study published in Hearing Review in July 2005.
If you look hard enough, it is sometimes possible to find financial aid to defray the costs, according to Kochkin. He advises people to turn to state and local departments of social services, fraternal organizations like the Kiwanis and Lions Club International, or one of the other sources listed on the Better Hearing Institute Web site. (http://www.betterhearing.org, go to Resources/Financial Assistance)
Many advocates for people with hearing problems are pinning hopes on legislation now working its way through both houses of Congress, the Hearing Aid Tax Credit Act (H.R. 414 and S.1060). The bill would give a $500 tax credit to people who buy hearing aids, if they are age 55 or older or are buying them for a dependent child. Identical versions were introduced by Representative Jim Ryun (R-KS ) and Senator Norm Coleman (R-MN) in 2005.
Some say the bill is a good first step but much more needs to be done. “We support it, but it’s not nearly enough,” says Brenda Battat, associate executive director of the Hearing Loss Association of America, the nation’s largest membership organization for the hearing-impaired. “A lot of our members ask us, `Why does it help only people who are 55 and older?’ They are 40-something or younger, in the workplace, and they also need help.”
According to Kochkin, about 40 percent of people with hearing loss make less than $30,000 a year. “A tax credit obviously isn’t going to solve the cost problem completely but at least it will make a dent.” The tax credit bill has picked up a growing number of sponsors in both houses of Congress but won’t be voted on before the summer recess.
To find out more about this issue, log on to www.betterhearing.org and check out “News.”
This article would make a great accompaniment to a local feature about someone in your community who is suffering in silence because they can’t afford hearing aids. - ARA |
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