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There's a massive cartel of 5 shadowy, evil mega corporations to overcome in the hearing aid space with lobbying chops and deeply embedded legal fuckery on the

There's a massive cartel of 5 shadowy, evil mega corporations to overcome in the hearing aid space with lobbying chops and deeply embedded legal fuckery on the level of big pharma. They use their position to exploit one of the most vulnerable populations on the planet, charging many thousands of usd for devices that cost $5 or less in mass production. They created a pseudomedicine called audiology and established regional and state level boards to maintain an iron grip on medical device classification, and have ignored decades of activism and campaigns to open the market despite massive bipartisan support and action all the way up to the presidential level. Innovations in the market are quietly litigated into oblivion, or purchased and incorporated into the existing framework of rent extraction from the elderly and disabled. Until we see punitive action taken to dismantle the groups behind price gouging and medical device restrictions, the market for hearing devices is off limits. There are a few exceptions, but the suppression of competition is brutal, ruthless to the extreme.

mgkimsal 5y ago
Bose's "hearphones" seem to be trying to make inroads in to that space. What's your view on those?
nonameiguess 5y ago
This is unfortunately quite true. My wife is hard of hearing. Thankfully, the devices are covered by insurance, but that is arguably part of the problem as it just subsidizes extortionary pricing. We're talking near ten grand for something that is technically impressive, but not any more than normal ANC headphones, and they haven't improved much while all other audio processing devices continue getting better. And insurance didn't cover it until a little over a decade ago, leaving her functionally deaf for most of her life when she didn't need to be. This kind of thing has a serious chilling effect on people, too. I can see it in the way I entered the software industry and decided to become an engineer after leaving the Army. I skyrocketed past her within a few years to the point I'm earning more than double what she does now and she's been doing it for 20 years. I puzzled for years over why she seems to so consistently get ignored and doesn't advocate for herself until I realized the obvious reason. She's been sitting in meetings and having face-to-faces with people for decades in which she couldn't hear what they were saying and she learned to just stay quiet and nod along, so no one has ever noticed her. It's a lifelong habit now leading to self-doubt, low self-esteem, peers thinking you're stuck up or unfriendly or even stupid. None of it had to be that way.

mgkimsal 5y ago

Bose's "hearphones" seem to be trying to make inroads in to that space. What's your view on those?

nonameiguess 5y ago

This is unfortunately quite true. My wife is hard of hearing. Thankfully, the devices are covered by insurance, but that is arguably part of the problem as it just subsidizes extortionary pricing. We're talking near ten grand for something that is technically impressive, but not any more than normal ANC headphones, and they haven't improved much while all other audio processing devices continue getting better. And insurance didn't cover it until a little over a decade ago, leaving her functionally deaf for most of her life when she didn't need to be. This kind of thing has a serious chilling effect on people, too. I can see it in the way I entered the software industry and decided to become an engineer after leaving the Army. I skyrocketed past her within a few years to the point I'm earning more than double what she does now and she's been doing it for 20 years. I puzzled for years over why she seems to so consistently get ignored and doesn't advocate for herself until I realized the obvious reason. She's been sitting in meetings and having face-to-faces with people for decades in which she couldn't hear what they were saying and she learned to just stay quiet and nod along, so no one has ever noticed her. It's a lifelong habit now leading to self-doubt, low self-esteem, peers thinking you're stuck up or unfriendly or even stupid. None of it had to be that way.