It just feels great to save money, right? It can be invigorating when you’ve found a great deal on something, and the bigger discount, the more pleased you are. It’s a little too easy, then, to make the price your primary criteria, to always choose the least expensive option, to let your coupons make your consumer decisions for you. When it comes to investing in a pair of hearing aids, chasing a bargain can be a huge oversight.
If you need hearing aids to treat hearing loss, going for the “cheapest” option can have health consequences. Preventing the development of health problems including depression, dementia, and the danger of a fall is the whole point of using hearing aids in the first place. The trick is to find the hearing aid that best fits your lifestyle, your hearing requirements, and your budget.
Tips for picking affordable hearing aids
Cheap and affordable aren’t necessarily the same thing. Affordability, as well as functionality, are what you should be looking for. This will help you stay within your budget while enabling you to find the ideal hearing aids for your personal requirements and budget. These tips will help.
You can get affordable hearing aids.
Hearing aids have a reputation for taking a toll on your pocketbook, a reputation, though, is not necessarily represented by reality. Most manufacturers sell hearing aids in a broad range of price points and work with financing companies to make their devices more affordable. If you’ve already made the decision that the most reliable hearing aids are too expensive, you’re probably more likely to search the bargain bin than look for affordable and effective options, and that can have a lasting, negative affect on your hearing and overall health.
Tip #2: Ask what’s covered
Some or even all of the expense of hearing aids could be covered by your insurance. In fact, some states require that insurance cover them for both kids and adults. Asking never hurts. There are government programs that often provide hearing aids for veterans.
Tip #3: Find hearing aids that can be tuned to your hearing loss
Hearing aids are, in some aspects, similar to prescription glasses. The frame is fairly universal (depending on your sense of style, of course), but the prescription is calibrated for your specific needs. Similarly, hearing aids might look alike cosmetically, but each hearing aid is calibrated to the individual user’s hearing loss needs.
Buying a cheap hearing device from the clearance shelf is not going to give you the same results (or, in many cases, results that are even slightly useful). These are more like amplification devices that raise the volume of all frequencies, not just the ones you’re having difficulty hearing. What’s the significance of this? Typically, hearing loss will only affect some frequencies while you can hear others perfectly. If you make it loud enough to hear the frequencies that are low, you’ll make it painful in the frequencies you can hear without a device. In other words, it doesn’t really solve the problem and you’ll wind up not using the cheaper device.
Tip #4: Different hearing aids have different functions
There’s a temptation to look at all of the great technology in modern hearing aids and think that it’s all extra, just bells and whistles. But you will need some of that technology to hear sounds properly. Hearing aids have innovative technologies tuned specifically for people with hearing loss. Background noise can be blocked out with many of these modern models and some can connect with each other. In addition, considering where (and why) you’ll be using your aids will help you decide on a model that fits your lifestyle.
It’s crucial, in order to compensate for your hearing loss in a reliable way, that you have some of this technology. A little speaker that turns the volume up on everything is far from the sophistication of a modern hearing aid. And that brings us to our last tip.
Tip #5: An amplification device is not the same thing as a hearing aid
Alright, say this with me: a hearing amplification device is not a hearing aid. If you get nothing else from this article, we hope it’s that. Because hearing amplification devices try really hard to make you think they do the same thing as a hearing aid for a fraction of the price. But that simply isn’t true.
Let’s have a closer look. An amplifier:
- Takes all sounds and turns up their volume.
- Is typically made cheaply.
- Provides the user with little more than basic volume controls (if that).
Conversely, a hearing aid:
- Will help you preserve the health of your hearing.
- Has long-lasting batteries.
- Can be molded specifically to your ears for optimal comfort.
- Can be programmed with different settings for different locations.
- Is tuned to amplify only the frequencies you have a hard time hearing.
- Can pick out and amplify specific sound types (such as the human voice).
- Can reduce background noise.
- Has highly qualified specialists that adjust your hearing aids to your hearing loss symptoms.
Your hearing deserves better than cheap
Everybody has a budget, and that budget is going to restrict your hearing aid options regardless of what price range you’re looking in.
That’s why we tend to highlight the affordable part of this. When it comes to hearing loss, the long term benefits of hearing loss treatment and hearing aids is well documented. This is why an affordable solution is what your focus should be. Just remember that your hearing deserves better than “cheap.”