It just feels great to find a bargain, right? It can be invigorating when you’ve received 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 consideration, to always go for the least expensive option, to let your coupons make your consumer choices for you. When it comes to buying a pair of hearing aids, going after a bargain can be a big oversight.
If you need hearing aids to manage hearing loss, going for the “cheapest” option can have health consequences. Avoiding the development of health problems including depression, dementia, and the danger of a fall is the whole point of using hearing aids after all. The key is to choose the hearing aid that best suits your lifestyle, your hearing requirements, and your budget.
Tips for picking affordable hearing aids
Cheap and affordable aren’t always the same thing. Look for affordability as well as functionality. This will help you stay within your budget while enabling you to find the ideal hearing aids for your personal needs and budget. These tips will help.
Tip #1: Research before you buy: Affordable hearing aids exist
Hearing aid’s reputation for being very expensive is not necessarily reflected in the reality of the situation. Most hearing aid manufacturers will partner with financing companies to make the device more affordable and also have hearing aids in a variety of prices. If you’ve started exploring the bargain bin for hearing aids because you’ve already decided that really good effective models are out of reach, it could have serious health consequences.
Tip #2: Ask what’s covered
Insurance might cover some or all of the costs related to getting a hearing aid. In fact, some states mandate that insurance cover them for both kids and adults. Asking never hurts. There are government programs that often supply hearing aids for veterans.
Tip #3: Find hearing aids that can be tuned to your hearing loss
In some aspects, your hearing aids are a lot like prescription glasses. The frame is pretty universal (depending on your sense of fashion, of course), but the prescription is calibrated for your specific needs. Hearing aids, too, have distinct settings, which we can calibrate for you, personalized to your precise needs.
You won’t get the same benefits by grabbing some cheap hearing device from the clearance shelf (or any useful results at all in many cases). These amplification devices boost all frequencies instead of boosting only the frequencies you’re having a hard time hearing. What’s the significance of this? Hearing loss is usually irregular, you can hear certain frequencies and sounds, but not others. If you boost all frequencies, the ones you have no trouble hearing will be too loud. In other words, it doesn’t really solve the problem and you’ll end up not using the cheaper device.
Tip #4: Not all hearing aids do the same things
There’s a temptation to look at all of the amazing 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 clearly. The specialized technology in hearing aids can be tuned in to the user’s level of hearing loss. Many modern models have artificial intelligence that helps block out background noise or communicate with each other to help you hear better. Additionally, considering where (and why) you’ll be using your aids will help you select a model that fits your lifestyle.
That technology is essential to compensate for your hearing loss in a healthy way. A tiny speaker that cranks the volume up on everything is far from the sophistication of a modern hearing aid. Which brings up our last tip.
Tip #5: An amplification device is not the same thing as a hearing aid
Okay, repeat after me: A hearing aid is not the same thing as a hearing amplification device. If you get nothing else from this article, we hope it’s that. Because the manufacturers of amplification devices have a monetary interest in convincing the consumer that their devices do what hearing aids do. But that’s untruthful marketing.
Let’s take a closer look. An amplifier:
- Is usually built cheaply.
- Gives the user the ability to adjust the basic volume but that’s about it.
- Turns up the volume on all sounds.
A hearing aid, conversely:
- Is calibrated to amplify only the frequencies you have trouble hearing.
- Will help you preserve the health of your hearing.
- Can create maximum comfort by being shaped to your ear.
- Has long-lasting batteries.
- Is set up specifically to your hearing loss symptoms by a highly skilled hearing specialist.
- Can limit background noise.
- Has the ability to change settings when you change locations.
- Can be programed to recognize specific sound profiles, such as the human voice, and amplify them.
Your ability to hear is too important to go cheap
Regardless of what your budget is, that budget will restrict your options depending on your overall price range.
This is why an affordable option tends to be the focus. The long-term benefits of hearing aids and hearing loss treatment are well documented. That’s why you should work on an affordable solution. Just remember that your hearing deserves better than “cheap.”
