Essential Hearing Aids Gear for Kids at School
Kids need a lot when they are going to school. These days, kids need more than just a backpack with paper, pencils, and their packed lunch. This becomes even more significant for kids with a hearing aids prescription.
Kids going to school wearing hearing aids have to deal with bullies who keep making fun of them, the discomfort of wearing the hearing aids for seven to eight hours in school, and they need to deal with the difficulty of having a different hearing environment compared to kids with normal hearing conditions.
However, there are a few essential accessories and gears that can make the experience easier to cope with, such as the following: Continue reading
Hearing Aid Technology – App Controlled Hearing Aids
Hearing aids are often considered to be fine just as they are but this couldn’t be any further from the truth. Hearing aids, for at least the past two decades, have barely improved and this means people with partial hearing loss never really had that many options to help their auditory senses.
That is about to change because now there are at least two new hearing aid products that can be adjusted on the fly using an iPhone. That’s right – with just a phone a person can now adjust the settings of their hearing aids to focus more on one side, to tone down the bass, or adjust for a “surround sound” appeal. Continue reading
Hearing Aids – Are They All the Same?
When you or a loved one is diagnosed with significant hearing loss it is very likely that a pair of hearing aids will be needed. Hearing aids can cost from a meager hundreds to well over thousands in dollars. Why the big difference in cost and what makes one better than the other?
Are all these hearing aids the same or is there really a defining set of factors that justify a price tag?
Looking at the Basic Parts
In general, every pair of hearing aids uses the same parts. These parts are:
Digital Advancements for Today’s Hearing Aids
Approximately one out of every three people over the age of 65 also suffers from hearing loss due to age or accumulative injury to the ears. This means every year more and more people are required to wear hearing aids. Unlike the basic hearing aids of the mid-1980s, today’s hearing aids are becoming far more advanced. They aren’t simple amplifiers that make sounds louder for a person with hearing loss.
In one basic sense of the word, these hearing aids enhance the auditory sense.
Enhanced Digital Gain Processing
This is a new digital system allows a user to focus on a particular sound of interest without having to suffer from discomfort or loud feedback. For example: a child could drown out the sounds of background chatter in a classroom and focus entirely on the sound of their teacher speaking. Continue reading
The Issue of Hearing Aids and Medical Insurance Coverage
According to recent surveys, more than 55% of senior citizens do not avail of hearing aids even though the devices have been prescribed to them by their medical specialists simply because they cost too much.
That amount is simply for the device and for the initial tests at the clinic. You’ll still have to pay for the doctor’s professional fee, the medications required, and the accessories needed such as a testing stethoscope and extra batteries. You’ll be spending every month for maintenance and check-ups too.
Unfortunately, hearing aids aren’t covered by standard medical insurances. A cochlear implant or complete-in-the-canal (CIC) hearing aid might be covered by some medical insurance companies because they are prosthetics to help with hearing loss but behind-the-ear (BTE) hearing aids aren’t.
This means you’d be expected to shoulder all those expenses entirely on your own, in cash or credit. Continue reading