Comment by pugworthy | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pugworthy | Hacker News Reader

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Fellow HA wearer here - close on 25 years now. I agree that disruption in manufacturing is important, but I also think there are a few other areas that could use disruption.

First, remove the stigma of hearing aids and hearing loss. It's not an old person's thing, and it's not something you have to hide. For me, they are glasses for my ears. That cost thousands of dollars. I want options. I want colors. I want "Ray Ban" to brand hearing aids. I do not want to browse a selection of colors that are clearly meant to either blend with my skin color or my hair color. Don't market to me that they are "hardly visible" as if I should be ashamed of them and hide them.

Second, make insurance work better. For a time, I had a state job, and the state insurance would pay $200 per hearing aid. That's nowhere close to the cost - probably about 10% of the cost. $200 gets you a cheap "hearing device" you'd get out of the back of an AARP magazine with pictures of silver haired people. In my current job (Fortune 50 company), they will pay 90% of the cost for hearing aids, but they will only buy me one pair in my life time. IN MY LIFE TIME. Utterly ridiculous. I could lose one or have one damaged, and be on my own for the $2500-3500 (each) replacement cost depending on what I got.

Agreed on both counts. Wearing hearing aids for essentially my whole life I've been made fun of for it maybe once or twice, and that did suck, but there's so much more stigma in an oticon pamphlet than I've ever experienced in real life. It definitely feels like a pitch aimed at older people who are in denial about losing their hearing, no matter how many pictures of teens chatting in a circle they put in there. Matching colors, assurances that they're unnoticeable, the implication that you need hearing aids to be "normal" (true-ish for me, but still not appreciated), and so on.

Insurance is a joke. Every private insurance plan I've ever had, even my current otherwise decent one, has paid a total of 0% for anything HA-related. And it's not just the hearing aids themselves, it's the tests and the followups and the fittings and on and on. It really adds up. Iirc medicaid actually had decent coverage, but I wasn't paying for it at the time so I don't know have numbers.

I say only half facetiously, make them look like AirPods. It’s considered perfectly normal to have one or two in your ears much of the time.

1) I don't want to be confused with someone who won't take their earphones out

2) this is another form of camouflage which is indicative of something that sour be hidden or shameful

So, take the idea that Starkey is going on, but make them ostentatious? Kind of the way arm and leg prostheses have gone now that 3D printing has reached consumers?

Ostentatious - characterized by vulgar or pretentious display; designed to impress or attract notice.

That is not at ALL what we want. Not even close.

They should be like glasses, as they serve quite a similar function. But they are even less evident, so unless you wear bright pink aids, they shouldn't probably attract any attention (they don't really change your look, do they?).

Everything else means there's still a stigma.

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