- Hey guys, welcome back to the DrCliffAuD vlog.
This is vlog number 37,
and today I wanna talk to you
about affordability of hearing aids.
This is a huge problem and concern
for a lot of individuals,
particularly in the United States,
but not just here,
it's happening around the world as well,
individuals who are not able to afford hearing treatment.
And the reason I'm talking about this today
is because of a very specific question that I got
on my YouTube channel this last week,
and I'm gonna read that for you right now.
This individual asked,
"Tell us exactly what you would do
if you have hearing loss,
never been examined, have no insurance,
and cannot pay three to $5,000 for hearing aids?
I know it's a common situation,
so what's the best anyone can do,
and what are the options?"
And I think that's a really good question.
And I'm gonna kinda break it down like this
in terms of what I would actually do
if I was the individual in this very specific situation.
So there's no insurance.
So the first thing I would do
is I would go somewhere and get a hearing test.
And if you can't afford a hearing test,
there are plenty of places out there
who will do a free hearing test for you.
And you can go in,
get that hearing evaluation done,
find out exactly what your hearing loss is,
and find out if a hearing aid or hearing aids
are even the right treatment option for you.
Just because you have hearing loss
does not guarantee that hearing aids are the right option.
Now over 90% of the time,
they are the best option,
so once you get that hearing evaluation done,
you'll have a better understanding
of what you actually have to do to treat your hearing loss.
But once you get that hearing evaluation done
and you understand that hearing aids
are the best and only option to treat your hearing loss,
then it's about asking the question
of either that clinic or going online and finding out
who has affordable options for you.
So there are a ton of clinics out there,
that if you go into them and say,
"I have X amount of dollars,
and I need to treat my hearing loss with this,
and that's my only option,"
I almost guarantee you
that they will find an option that will work for you.
It may not be the best option in the world.
You're not gonna get the best hearing aids in the world,
but you'll get hearing aids
that can actually treat your hearing loss, most likely.
Now of course, this all depends on where you go.
You also have to be a little bit cautious
that if you go someplace that has free hearing tests,
you have to make sure
that they're not just using that free hearing test
as a ploy to get you to buy something from them.
They should really have their intent set on
making sure that they treat your hearing loss
to the best of their capability.
So from that perspective,
I would see, okay, I have X amount of dollars,
and I wanna get hearing treatment from them.
And if I still cannot afford
whatever option that they have,
then what I would do is I would go back to the drawing table
and I would actually work another job.
So if you really asked me,
"Cliff, what would you do?"
I'm like, you know, I need to sleep about six,
six and a half hours a night,
maybe a little bit of family time.
But if my priorities were I wanna get hearing aids
and I wanna get good hearing aids,
I'm gonna save up money,
and I'm gonna go out and get an extra job.
I worked at Pizza Hut when I was growing up.
So when I was in high school,
we're talking the late '90s here,
I was working at Pizza Hut.
And the drivers who were delivery drivers
made anywhere between 50 and $100 a weekend night.
And when you start looking at breaking down the cost,
let's say that you were gonna spend $5,000
on a set of hearing aids
with all the care that comes along with that,
with those devices,
and if you made an extra $500 a month
by working some nights and weekends delivering pizzas,
by the end of the year,
you would have plenty of money
to purchase hearing aids with.
Now that being said,
there are some individuals out there
who may not even be able to get a job
because their hearing loss
is actually impairing their ability to get hired.
Now if that's the case,
and if it were me,
if I couldn't actually go out and get a job
because I could not hear well enough
to be hired somewhere,
then I would go find
my state's vocational rehabilitation center,
because voc rehab exists in each individual state
to get individuals who have difficulty hearing,
get them treatment so they can make it
back into the workforce.
It is a win-win situation for the state.
They actually help someone out,
like yourself, perhaps,
and get you back into the workforce
which helps out the state and the economy of the state.
So that's what I would do.
I would go, and let's say
that you can't get the best hearing aids in the world
from vocational rehabilitation,
you go and you get what they'll give you, all right,
you maybe spend a little bit of money on that,
it depends on what state you're in,
you go and you work another part-time job
on top of the full-time job that you already have,
you save up all that money over the course of that year,
and then you take that money
and you go and you invest it
in an awesome set of hearing aids
with excellent hearing healthcare.
Now for whatever reason,
let's just say that I could not work an extra job.
It is literally impossible for me to work an extra job.
Maybe it's health-related reasons,
maybe my full-time job
and all the jobs I'm working already just to stay afloat
is taking up 18 hours of my day,
then basically what I would do
is I would get a hold of the Starkey HearNow Program.
Starkey HearNow Program is basically this program
that different providers sign up for.
And what happens is
is if you meet the income requirements,
meaning if you make a certain amount of money or less
based on how many people are in your household,
they will actually give you a set of hearing aids.
Now there's a catch here,
you actually have to apply,
and there is an application fee for it.
But if you know that you meet the application requirements,
I've never seen anybody denied
if they truly make less than that amount of money.
And you can check this out online;
the information is freely out there.
But then you can go and see a hearing care provider
and they're gonna give you the hearing aids,
so you're gonna get hearing aids
if you have hearing loss in both ears,
you're gonna apply for two hearing aids,
you'll get hearing aids in both ears.
They will get you custom ear molds if you need them,
this is all included,
and they will give you fitting and follow-up care
included in that to some degree.
But that's part of their requirement
if you're part of the Starkey HearNow Program.
So you can literally,
if money is truly the option,
or is truly the limitation
of you getting hearing aids or not,
then going to Starkey HearNow Program is a no-brainer.
And if you want better hearing aids,
because you don't get the best hearing aids
with the Starkey HearNow Program.
You get hearing aids, which is good,
but you can actually,
whatever you need to do,
you get those for right now,
you go out, maybe you work an extra part-time job,
maybe you do something,
or save up your money, cut expenses.
I'm a huge Dave Ramsey fan.
I mean, our budget is locked down,
and we know how much money's coming in.
And I used to be in a place
where I didn't have a lotta money at all
to spend on anything,
so I totally get where someone would be coming from
when they're like, boy, they're about to be hit
with a $5,000 expense for their health,
and they just don't know how to come up with that money.
In fact, there's some crazy statistic out there
that says that 70 or 80
or something ridiculous percent of Americans
couldn't come up with $400 for a medical emergency.
And so when you start talking about
thousands of dollars for hearing aids,
it would be a crisis
if hearing aids cost hundreds of dollars.
There'd be people out there
who literally couldn't come up with hundreds of dollars
to purchase hearing aids.
But that doesn't mean
that there's not options out there for you,
and there's not things that you can do
to get hearing treatment.
Yeah, it sucks, I mean,
to have to go work another job.
You might have a family, you might have kids,
but you have to start looking at what the priorities are
in this situation.
If you wanna receive excellent hearing healthcare,
you're gonna have to spend money to get it,
but it doesn't mean that you have to go that route.
You can go other routes.
In fact, Costco,
there are other big box retailers out there
that will get you good hearing aids
and will provide you with good care,
and you spend less than $2,000 to do that.
I mean, there are significantly
more affordable options out there
if you really have affordability issues.
So now it might take me a couple years
before I actually get
the best hearing aids that are out there
and the best high-quality care that's out there.
But if it were me,
I'd be spending more time working,
I mean, I already work, like,
geez, I don't even know how many hours a week I work,
combining all the video content that I do
and working in the clinic,
but I would bet you that I could still find time.
I could technically still deliver pizzas on the weekend
to earn a little bit of extra money
to put towards my hearing healthcare.
So, I mean, if you're asking me what I would do,
that's pretty much what I would do, that would be my answer.
My situation, of course, is unique
from anybody else's situation,
and someone else might not be able to work,
but they also have other available options
at their disposal.
So I really enjoyed that question.
That was a fantastic question
that was posted on my channel,
and I really love the opportunity
to answer that in a way
that hopefully helps someone realize
that they have more options
when it comes to treating their hearing loss.
Now the other thing that I wanna talk about,
and I'm actually gonna pull this up as well,
when I first got into audiology,
and I was in grad school,
the whole concern and question about affordability
and how that negatively impacts individuals' ability
to actually treat their hearing loss,
it seemed pretty obvious that, oh, well, shoot,
if hearing treatment costs four to $5,000,
then there's gonna be a ton of people
who just cannot afford that.
And that has to be the reason
why the hearing aid adoption rates
in the United States are so low.
And if you look at it,
there was a statistical analysis that was performed,
this survey that was conducted
back in 2014, 2015,
so I was kind of at the end of
my graduate school program at this point.
But the numbers came back
that only 30.2% of individuals in the United States
who have hearing loss actually use hearing aids.
And that is a staggeringly low number
to be quite honest with you.
And I bet you that number has gone up
in the past five years.
But still, I mean,
what that's basically saying
is that one out of every three individuals
who has a hearing loss
that could be treated by hearing aids
is actually getting hearing aids.
And when you think about it,
it's like, well, shoot,
obviously the reason for that
is that people just cannot afford hearing treatment.
But then when you start looking at the percentages
of different countries in the European Union
that give hearing aids to their citizens,
so it's built into their national program,
their national healthcare program,
and if you have hearing loss,
you get hearing aids for free, okay?
Now I'm sure there's taxes that you pay
over the course of the year or whatever,
but the hearing aid adoption rates
are anywhere between, let's see here,
you have France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland,
and the United Kingdom here,
and the one with the highest adoption rate
of hearing aids is the UK at 42.4%.
So you're looking at a 12% increase
in hearing aid adoption rate,
and I don't know if it's because,
'cause there's other variables
involved in this as well,
but they get hearing aids for free,
and it only increased the adoption rate of hearing treatment
by roughly 12%, what, 12.2% over the United States.
And this is for, like,
I mean, people you can literally be walking on the street
and be like, you know what,
I have hearing loss, I need hearing aids,
and you can get free hearing aids,
they will just give them to you.
And I have a bunch of viewers from the UK,
and please correct me if I'm wrong in the Comments section,
but if individuals who live in your country
want hearing aids,
there's no concern from a cost perspective.
Now I know
a fantastic hearing healthcare provider out there
in the UK,
and I believe it's Matthew Pearson Zone1Hearing,
and he actually has a private practice,
because some people are willing to pay
to have a higher level of care out there in the UK.
So even though hearing aids are free,
people still choose to go
and actually purchase hearing devices
from someone who really knows what they're doing
and provides patient-centered care
and follows best practices and all of those things.
But that's kind of besides the point.
The point here is that
even if hearing aids were free in the United States,
the hearing aid adoption rates
would still be very, very low.
And when hearing aid adoption rates are very low,
that creates this negative economic situation
for hearing aid manufacturers,
companies who dispense hearing aids,
hearing care providers, so on so forth,
because when you have less people
that you can actually serve,
you have to charge more money
in order to make the economics work for that.
And the situation that I kinda present
is the iPhone situation.
I'm just kinda free-flowing this here.
In fact, I could probably look it up.
So how many hearing aids were sold in 2019?
Okay, so, in the United States here, 2019,
4.23 million hearing aids were sold in the United States,
and that's up 6.5% from 2018.
So 4.23 million hearing aids,
now that seems like a ton, right?
I mean, that is a ton of hearing aids that were sold
in the United States alone.
Now let's go and look and see how many iPhones.
Okay, so in (laughs),
okay, Apple sold in 2019,
sold 40.8 million iPhones.
40.8 versus four point, what, 4.2, something like that?
That is insane.
That is insane to think
that if hearing aids sold in the United States 40,
and now is that in the United States,
or is that global?
I think that might be global.
But nonetheless, if there were,
and I guarantee you there's not 40.8 million hearing aids
sold globally throughout the world.
But if 40.8 million hearing aids were sold,
I guarantee you that prices would be lower
because that's how economics works.
When you have more people buying something,
the cost of that something can go down,
that is economics 101.
Now that doesn't really change
the current situation that we're in right now.
I still feel like we have things that we need to do
to lower the cost of hearing healthcare.
But if you just flat out,
if the only thing you care about
is cheaper and cheaper hearing aids,
you're gonna get a cheaper and cheaper quality
of either product or service
that's going to come along with those devices.
So the best advice that I can give you
if you're struggling
to be able to afford hearing healthcare
is to go somewhere who either sells it for a lower price
but still offers high-quality devices and service,
go with an option that can tide you over
while you're saving money working an extra job
or cutting other expenses out of your budget,
and then in a year or two or three or four,
you purchase hearing aids
that are significantly better
than the ones that you would have used
throughout that time period.
And essentially problem solved.
And then you're gonna have to do it all over again,
because years down the road,
you're still going to want and/or need new hearing aids
as your hearing loss changes,
as your situation changes.
But really at the end of the day,
affordability should not be limiting you
on pursuing hearing treatment.
If you wanna use it as an excuse,
that is fine, I'm okay with that.
But it should not be the limiter
because there are other options out there for you.
Okay guys, I have ranted enough today.
That is it for today's video.
I expect a lot of interesting comments and perspectives
down in the Comments section,
and as always, I'll see ya next week.
(upbeat hip hop music)