Why Can't Industry Design an Affordable Hearing Aid? 549
Hugh Pickens writes "Tricia Romano writes in the NY Times that over the last 10 years, purchasing a hearing aid had become even more difficult and confusing than buying a new car — and almost as expensive. 'I visited Hearx, the national chain where I had bought my previous aids. There, a fastidious young man spread out a brochure for my preferred brand, Siemens, and showed me three models. The cheapest, a Siemens Motion 300, started at $1,600. The top-of-the-line model was more than $2,000 — for one ear. I gasped.' A hearing aid is basically just a microphone and amplifier in your ear so it isn't clear why it costs thousands of dollars while other electronic equipment like cellphones, computers and televisions have gotten cheaper. Russ Apfel, an engineer who designed a technology now found in all hearing aids, says there is no good reason for the high prices. 'The hearing aid industry uses every new thing, like digital or a new algorithm, to raise prices,' says Apfel. 'The semiconductor industry traditionally reduces the cost of products by 10 to 15 percent a year,' he said, but 'hearing aids go up 8 percent a year annually' and have for the last 20 years."
Re:three words, one hyphen: (Score:4, Interesting)
very true. I wonder what the companies profit margins are.
Ripe for competition? (Score:5, Interesting)
Why hasn't anyone kickstartered a competitor?
Re:Simple (Score:4, Interesting)
As a sound engineer I find a lot of hearing aids have had major features removed. I'm always getting more and more people who have aids that have no induction loop ("T") setting. Some now come with bluetooth, good for your mobile phone but not easy to pair to a PA system, kiosk or POS.
Shooters' earmuffs (Score:4, Interesting)
nowadays hearing protectors for gun shooters have electronics built in. The earpieces go over the ears and damps out sound, as they've always done. However now there's microphones that pick up sound from the outside, and pipes them into speakers inside the earpiece. If the sound level outside exceed a threshold (such as a gun going off), it doesn't get piped into the speakers.
There's a volume knob, so if you crank that up you can hear much fainter sounds than your normal hearing. So you can use it like a hearing aid, sort of.
You can buy decent ones for $50 - $100.
But if government subsidies and medicare got involved, they'd probably cost $2000 also.
Re:three words, one hyphen: (Score:5, Interesting)
Sorry, but you've been misinformed. If you have any medical procedure done, you can call them and ask for a discount because you are uninsured and paying out-of-pocket. Although they are not obligated to do so, they usually will, and you will often only have to pay 25%ish of the original costs.
If you think my surgeon would have made me come up with $16k (the amount they billed my insurance for) cash for my 1-hour procedure if I had no insurance, then you have a strong misunderstanding of how the healthcare industry works. I'd like to think I know at least a little bit about it. After all, I'm employed at a hospital.
For-profit system (Score:4, Interesting)
One word reply (Score:5, Interesting)
Canada.
Check on hearing aid costs in Canada. You will discover they are very high there as well.
Re:You can have 2: cheap, realtime, or resolution. (Score:4, Interesting)
OK, so you need to hire a decent professional engineer to design your hearing aid. This isn't a DIY project. We get it.
That one-off expense is no excuse for the cost.
Re:Simple (Score:5, Interesting)
A couple other points:
We deafies want to change our batteries every week or more, not every day. Have you seen the tiny size of current batteries? You must squeeze every last bit of efficiency out of the hardware possible.
The receivers (aka speakers that go in the ear) must be versatile enough to produce extremely loud sounds across the range of at least 500Hz --> 4KHz with no perceptible distortion. Distortion is the #1 enemy of deafies, and means the difference between "how are you today sir?" and "ajksdhv sdjkch asdkjhvkkf sjk?"
Oh, did I mention the receivers that must be as awesome as above, must also be able to survive something like 18,000 hours in a moist environment? (4 years, 12 hours a day)
The OS and DSP cannot even introduce milliseconds of delay while deciding what is "noise" to be filtered, what is "too loud" and should be compressed, and what was really soft but important enough to amplify even more than normal.
I don't like paying thousands of dollars for my aids, but neither do I believe they can sell for $400.
Re:custom fitting costs roughly $100 (Score:4, Interesting)
Hearing aids are right in the ear. It's been mentioned that many today have bluetooth. With that you should be able to hook it up to a computer and, sitting in a quiet room* follow the instructions given on the screen.
Stage 1: Click when you hear a tone.
Stage 2: Which is louder: Tone A or Tone B?
Stage 3: Which is clearer: Audio A or Audio B?
Outside of unusual circumstances that should be enough to 'dial in' the hearing aid very well, in under an hour, without assistance.
Excepting this, looking at what's going on - the devices themselves are over a thousand, and that's WITHOUT developing and programming in a custom hearing profile. That part would be a separate bill.
*DQ's my computer room, but a tablet should work excellent.
I'd mod this up if I could (Score:4, Interesting)
People need to look around, notice these things are expensive everywhere, and then maybe think that it isn't the evil US healthcare system causing it.
When there's a massive price disparity between the US and Canada or the EU, like for say prescription drugs, well then you begin to suspect something is afoot. I mean they should be rather similar, most things are (particularly when you adjust for taxes that are in the price).
However hearing aids are expensive everywhere. That indicates the opposite: That they really ARE expensive and that is what it is.
Re:three words, one hyphen: (Score:3, Interesting)
Free markets work, no matter what you say about them. If they didn't, then computers would be ultra expensive and unavailable, while the Post Office would make money.
It's NOT an amplifier. (Score:2, Interesting)
TFS, and parent (and all sorts of other people) apparently don't have a clue.
Hearing aids are NOT amplifier-based, and haven't been for 20 years (30 years?).
They shift frequencies from ones you can't hear to ones you can hear, and do all sorts of other fun things like that.
While still not "extremely complicated" in principle, neither is your automobile, yet you still pay $15K+ for that.
The top of the line ones are crazy expensive because they're top of the line. Same reason you can buy a $4000 computer, top of the line stuff is more expensive because it's brand new and few people buy them.
Re:three words, one hyphen: (Score:3, Interesting)
And 50 years ago, she would have simply had it set and like your Grandpa would've handed down an inheritance to you.
Your Mom just spent your inheritance on her wrist. I'm trying not to make a moral judgement here. We, as a society, have decided that there is no amount too high to spend on our bodies, even if we have to lay the debt at the feet of our children's children's children.
Re:Two words: dumb customers (Score:4, Interesting)
Yep, there is plenty of hearing aids in the range of 300$ to 1600$. Here, in my country, the hearing aids are covered by the medical insurance plan from the country. So, the government agency is negociating prices with manufacturers and I can ensure you, no hearing aids above 500$ each are on the list. However, you must know they are not the bleeding-edge products from these companies, they are the end of line products. Even, they are no longer advertised on their respective websites. However, due the negociation for a large number of hearing aids per year, the governement is able to drive down the prices. The contract with the manufacturers include maintenance plan for three or six years.
Obviously, the companies don't want to sell these on the free market and are trying to sell top of line products instead at the higher tag price with the large profit margin.