Originally Posted by
Darth Lefty
My wife's newest earbuds came with a raft of accessibility features that made them into super powerful hearing aids that cancel white noise while amplifying specific sounds like speech. They are explicitly a hearing aid, per se, thru this software. This ought to have broken a monopoly by the medical device people who have been stagnant and charging rents. But no - they did their boardroom collusion. So now it's said to be a budget-friendly, accessible option, "generally considered entry-level solutions and do not replace the comprehensive capabilities of traditional, prescription-grade hearing aids." To me this sounds just like the most infuriating load-of-crap hobby marketing. Teaching FOMO for hearing aids! jesus wept
Mine are not so great but do have active noise canceling, very nice on airplanes, and a "thru" setting that's basically the opposite of noise canceling. They play your music and the ambient noise together. I don't have a use for that but I can see how someone could.
I used to use the pass-through feature of the Airpods Pro earbuds. Maybe I still should, but I get overwhelmed with sound, so now I use the noise cancellation.
I know what you mean about the industry. Missouri may have shaken things up because their law (last I heard) says that hearing aids shall not cost more than $500. When I told my audiologist about this, he accidentally blurted out, "But that's barely more than I pay for them," which exposes how much profit they make. I feel divided on the issue. I think the profit margin has been too big, but I also think audiologists should get paid for what they do. What they do isn't obvious. Basically, they made it seem like their work is easy but it isn't.
But now a big portion of hearing aids is software, and it can be done with fairly inexpensive, nearly generic hardware. That is going to cut profit margins way down. Or it should.
Just as an example of why audiologists deserve to make a living, I gave myself a hearing test with an iphone app and took the results and entered an audiogram into the airpods' configuration. That kinda-sorta made it into cheap hearing aids. But while the frequencies I was missing came back, it didn't add clarity to the speech I was trying to hear. I think it's because I'm not an audiologist and don't know how to do it properly.
Medical insurance should cover this stuff. It's insane that it doesn't in the US. Same for dental and eye care. They are medical needs.