Health insurance plans are slowly starting to provide more coverage for hearing aids. In a recent groundbreaking survey by Hearing Tracker and the Hearing Loss Association of America (HLAA), 25 percent of respondents said they had received health-insurance subsidies for their hearing aids. That’s nearly double the 13 percent reported in other surveys a decade ago. But the new report also makes it clear insurance companies still have a long way to go before consumers can routinely expect substantial coverage for their hearing aids.
Hearing Tracker asked approximately 2000 hearing aid consumers whether their medical insurance helped to cover some or all of the cost. Respondents were from Hearing Tracker and HLAA membership lists. The results revealed that while one in four people had help paying for their hearing aids, “fewer than one in twenty received full coverage from their insurance company.”
There are a number of reasons health insurance coverage for hearing aids is still so scarce. Like vision correction, hearing aids were never considered medical necessities. So insurance companies made them a “want-to-have” versus a “got-to-have” feature of their plans.
And federal and state governments have been slow to mandate insurance coverage for hearing assistance coverage. Medicare doesn’t cover hearing aids, although private insurers are increasingly adding hearing exams and support for purchase of hearing aids into their Medicare supplement plans.
If a significant number of state legislatures mandated hearing-aid coverage, the pace of change could accelerate. However, currently only three small states mandate insurance coverage for hearing aids for adults: Arkansas ($1,400 per hearing aid, every three years), New Hampshire ($1,500 per aid, every five years) and Rhode Island ($800 per aid, every three years).
The hearing industry might follow the models developed in vision care, where insurance companies often supplement their basic plans with affordable vision coverage options for eye exams and corrective lenses. However, even with vision, there are still most always significant deductibles and copays for the coverage.
When insurance companies do provide coverage, one result is a near-certainty: a lot more people start using hearing aids. In the United Kingdom, where the National Health Service covers most of the cost of hearing aids, adoption rates are much higher. And in the U.S., the highest adoption rates of hearing aids are among armed services veterans who receive full coverage from the Veterans Affairs hospital system.
Unfortunately, the survey indicates the high cost of hearing aids most likely will continue to hamper widespread adoption by the estimated 29 million Americans who could benefit from hearing aids. The good news is that while progress is slow, the levels offered by major insurance companies that do provide coverage appearsto be significant.
Hearing Tracker reported that of those who did receive some form of coverage, the average insurance reimbursement was $1,275 per hearing aid. With average prices of mid-range digital hearing aids poised to descend to under $2,000 per ear in the not-too-distant future, those kinds of benefits have the potential to move the dial on hearing aid adoption.