- In this video, I'm gonna teach you the six things
you can do to save money on hearing aids.
Coming up.
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Hi guys, Cliff Olson, doctor of audiology
and founder of Applied Hearing Solutions in Anthem, Arizona,
and on this channel,
I cover a bunch of hearing-related information
to make you a better-informed consumer.
So if you're into that,
consider hitting the subscribe button.
You don't need me to tell you
that hearing aids are expensive.
You already know that.
But did you know that there's things that you can do
to help reduce the cost of hearing aids
without sacrificing the hearing treatment?
That's why I made this video, to show you the six things
that you can do to save some money on hearing aids.
The first thing you should do
is call your insurance company.
Now a lot of people think
that just because Medicare doesn't cover hearing aids
that their insurance won't cover hearing aids
and that's not necessarily the case.
There's more and more insurance companies
that giving hearing aid benefits
to individuals who have hearing loss.
That being said, there's also insurance companies
that are contracted with managed care groups
which will get you a discount on hearing treatment as well.
The thing to understand though about managed care groups
like TruHearing or EPIC is that a lot of times
when you go into an audiology clinic,
you can get the audiology clinic to give you a better price
that whatever managed care will get you,
but it's nice to know if you walk into that clinic saying,
"Hey, I have TruHearing benefits,"
and that will trigger them to actually give you
a better price.
Number two is don't buy hearing aids as often.
There's a lot of people out there who think that
getting the newest, latest and greatest technology
every year or two is going to help them substantially
with their hearing, and that is definitely not the case,
and if there are clinics that are telling you that
that's the case, then I would question the recommendation
to upgrading technology that often.
You see, even though there is improvements
in hearing technology year over year,
the improvements are generally small
unless there's a major feature that comes out
that would dramatically improve your listening environment
or situations that you want to hear in.
What you should really be doing
is seeing if you can find a place
that will program your hearing aids better.
Hearing aids only perform as well as they are programmed.
So if the place that you're going to
is not following best practices,
you'd probably be better served at taking the hearing aids
that you currently have and going somewhere
that does do best practices,
meaning they perform real-ear measures,
they do other outcome, subjective outcome measures
in order to determine if you're actually getting benefit.
If your hearing care professional's way
of determining benefit is "How does that sound?"
then you're probably going to a place
that doesn't follow best practices.
The third way is to ask for lower-level technology.
Lower-end hearing devices are actually still pretty good,
and while they won't help you hear as well
as the premium-level technology,
they'll actually do a lot more than you would think,
and it really comes down to how well
that hearing device is programmed for you.
I often say that a low-level hearing aid,
if it's programmed well, will perform better
than a premium-level device that's not programmed well.
The fourth thing you can do
is actually finance your devices.
Financing is a great way in order to break up
that front-end payment that you would traditionally make
when buying hearing aids and hearing treatment
and it's being able to spread it out
over a long period of time.
Pretty much any clinic that you'll go into
will have some kind of financing options
will either be low-interest medical financing
or no-interest financing, and they'll be able to help you
set up with, set you up with that and find something
that works inside of your budget.
The fifth thing you can do is actually consider
buying hearing aids online, and I know that seems ridiculous
from someone who basically sells hearing aids
in a clinic setting.
Why would I be recommending to you online,
and it doesn't necessarily win me a lot of fans
in my own profession, but if you just can't afford
or you can't find a clinic that can give you
a affordable price on hearing aids,
then going online might be a viable option for you.
Now one thing you need to keep in mind is that
when you buy hearing aids online,
it is really a crapshoot from that standpoint.
You don't know if the device you're gonna get
is physically gonna be fitting right in your ear
and you don't know if it's gonna be programmed
right for you.
In fact, I guarantee that the hearing device
is not programmed right for you
because you never had it professionally fit
while it was in your ear.
So keep that in mind but if you are looking for just
some marginal benefit or a little bit of benefit,
going online might be the way to go,
and if you want more information on that,
I actually created another video that I'll link
in the description below about the seven things
you should know before buying hearing aids online.
And last but not least, number six.
See if you can find a hearing aid clinic
that will unbundle their care, and what I mean by that is
you have generally two types of clinics.
You have a clinic that will bundle the cost
of the hearing aid and the hearing treatment
all into one cost, and then you have other clinics
that will separate the cost of the hearing aid
and the treatment that they provide.
When you go to a clinic that separates those costs,
you can generally get lower upfront costs of technology
and you don't have to prepay for the care that you may
or may not receive.
Now yes, there are some merits to going with
a bundled delivery model of hearing aids
and hearing treatment, is that you can basically go in
as many times as you want to, or whatever they've scheduled
for you to come in for, and you don't have to worry about
any additional out-of-pocket expense,
and because you can finance that,
assuming you have decent credit,
you can spread-load the cost of that anyway,
but one of the things in the industry that's changing a lot
is this aspect of why would you spend all of this money
upfront when you don't really know if you're gonna use that,
okay, and then the other aspect is is that some places
really actually sell you what appears to be a bundled model
but they don't actually provide you
with really high-quality follow-up care.
It really comes down to if you want to have success
with treatment, have really good success,
you need to make sure that the professional care
is on point.
You really need to make sure that they're doing
all of the processes and doing them extremely accurately
to make sure that you have the most success possible
with your hearing aids.
One thing you don't want to do is sacrifice the quality
of care in order to save some money.
There are plenty of clinics out there who will sell you
a hearing device for extremely cheap but won't provide you
with the adequate fitting and follow-up care
to make sure that that device actually works right for you.
So they're gonna make their easy money,
you're never gonna come back in for your follow-up
'cause they're not gonna give you very good follow-up
and then ultimately you'll be left with this impression
that hearing aids just don't work for you,
which is largely not the case.
If you're a candidate for a hearing aid,
there is absolutely no reason
why you shouldn't be perceiving benefit with hearing aids.
The only way that that would happen is if
you got the completely wrong type of hearing aid for you
and if the fitting and follow-up is horrible.
Okay guys, so let's recap.
Number one, ask your insurance to see if they cover
a portion of your hearing treatment.
Number two, don't go and get new hearing aids quite yet.
Reprogram them, see if you can get more out of those devices
that what you're currently getting.
Number three is ask about a lower level of technology.
Just remember, you can make a low-level piece of technology
work really well if you program it well,
and you can make an expensive piece of technology
work horribly if it's programmed wrong.
Number four is see if you can ask about financing
at the next place that you go
to see if you can spread-load the cost of that treatment
over longer period of time.
Number five, consider buying your hearing aids online.
While I caution you about this,
it can be a way to get the technology for cheaper
and then take that technology into a clinic
so they can program it for you.
And number six, find a clinic that unbundles their care.
That will again reduce the amount of money
that you'll have to pay upfront
and if you don't need as much follow-up care,
you're not gonna pay for stuff that you're not using.
That's it for this video.
If you have any questions,
leave them in the comment section below.
If you like the video, go ahead and give it a thumbs-up,
and if you want to see more videos just like this one,
go ahead and find my logo somewhere on here
and hit the subscribe button.
I'll see you next time.
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