Does your workday ever include people sobbing while telling you about how they couldn’t hear their father’s last words or that they are considering suicide because of debilitating, constant ringing in their ears? Maybe the people who come to your job tell you that they can no longer get brunch with their friends or speak to their children on the phone because they just can’t hear what’s being said no matter what they do?
Research and programming on health inequities is absolutely needed but policy changes to hearing aid pricing and coverage is also critical to bring about real change.”
– Shade Avery Kirjava, Doctoral Student
As a licensed clinical audiologist providing hearing healthcare for people who have lost hearing, I encounter heartbreaking situations like this all the time. Even more devastating is the next conversation I have with many of my patients. It usually goes something like this: “Your hearing problem will not get better without treatment. Hearing aids are the optimal treatment for this hearing loss. Hearing aids will improve your hearing and dramatically change your life for the better, but your insurance doesn’t cover hearing aids. Unless you are willing to pay thousands of dollars for these hearing aids, we need to think about other options.”
I feel disgusted and helpless every time I have this conversation with my patients.
Unless you or a loved one are one of the roughly 29 million Americans who have hearing loss that could benefit from hearing aids, you may not know how prohibitively expensive hearing healthcare is. With even basic prescription hearing aids costing up to $4,000, many of the people in your community who need hearing aids don’t get them. This is health inequity — an avoidable, unfair difference in our healthcare system. For people with hearing loss, the cost of hearing aids worsens health inequities. A two-tiered hearing healthcare system exists in the United States where people who can afford or have insurance coverage for a $4,000+ pair of hearing aids every few years receive the care they need, and everyone else are forced to make do with less helpful, cheaper over-the-counter non-prescription devices or receive no care for their hearing loss at all.
Non-prescription hearing devices are like over-the-counter reading glasses – it’s not reasonable to force people who need prescription glasses to use cheaper reading glasses, and it’s not fair or right to price people with hearing loss out of prescription hearing aids just because there are cheaper, less effective options available.
The unfairness of the current healthcare system in the United States was (and is!) so egregious that I am pursuing a doctoral degree in public health so I could make a difference. I’m currently in my second year of my PhD program, and divide my time between working on research to reduce health inequities and advocacy for a more equitable healthcare system.
I’m far from alone in my frustration with the lack of affordable hearing healthcare. The National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD) recently unveiled their new five-year strategy, which includes an emphasis on reducing health inequities for people who have lost hearing.
Research and programming on health inequities is absolutely needed but policy changes to hearing aid pricing and coverage is also critical to bring about real change. March 3 was World Hearing Day, and I spent the day working to help my community hear their families and friends as well as they can. I hope you will help your community hear the things that make life worth living by contacting your elected representatives this month and calling for equitable hearing healthcare, starting with accessibly priced prescription hearing aids.
