A hearing aid is a medical product. An off-the-shelf headphone reproduces sound that has already been engineered for consumption. Real-world sound on the other

A hearing aid is a medical product. An off-the-shelf headphone reproduces sound that has already been engineered for consumption. Real-world sound on the other hand is unstructured and chaotic, so you'll need software to prioritize speech sounds while de-prioritizing background noise. That's going to require a bit more power to solve than a pair of headphones. On top of that, you'll need to understand which frequencies need boosting based on the patient's audiogram (basically a hearing loss profile). Can hearing aids be cheaper? Probably. Should they be covered by insurance? Absolutely. Should you research a bit more before spouting off some sort of feelgood soundbite? Yes, as well.