Saving money just feels great, right? Getting a good deal can be invigorating, and more rewarding the better the deal. It’s a little too easy, then, to make the price your primary criteria, to always go for the least expensive option, to let your coupons make your buying choices for you. But going after a bargain when it comes to purchasing hearing aids can be a big oversight.
Health repercussions can result from choosing the cheapest option if you require hearing aids to treat hearing loss. 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. Finding the correct hearing aid to fit your hearing needs, lifestyle, and budget is the trick.
Tips for choosing affordable hearing aids
Affordable is not equivalent cheap. Keep an eye on affordability and functionality. This will help you keep within your budget while allowing you to get the ideal hearing aids for your personal needs and budget. These tips will help.
Tip #1: You can obtain affordable hearing aids.
Hearing aids have a reputation for putting a dent in your wallet, a reputation, however, is not always reflected by reality. 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 searching the bargain bin for hearing aids because you’ve already decided that really good effective models are too expensive, it could have serious health repercussions.
Tip #2: Find out what your insurance will cover
Some or even all of the expense of hearing aids may be covered by your insurance. Some states, in fact, have laws requiring insurance companies to cover hearing aids for children or adults. Asking never hurts. There are government programs that frequently supply hearing aids for veterans.
Tip #3: Look for hearing aids that can be tuned to your hearing loss
Hearing aids are, in some ways, a lot like prescription glasses. Depending on your sense of style, the frame comes in a few options, but the exact prescription differs greatly from person to person. Hearing aids, too, have specific settings, which we can tune 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 helpful results at all in many cases). These are more like amplifiers that increase the volume of all frequencies, not only the ones you’re having difficulty hearing. Why is this so important? Hearing loss is usually irregular, you can hear certain frequencies and voices, but not others. If you raise the volume enough to hear the frequencies that are low, you’ll make it uncomfortable in the frequencies you can hear without a device. You will probably end up not using this cheap amplification device because it doesn’t solve your real issue.
Tip #4: Different hearing aids have different functions
It can be tempting to think that all of the modern technology in a quality hearing aid is simply “bells and whistles”. But you will need some of that technology to hear sounds clearly. Hearing aids have specialized technologies calibrated specifically for those who have hearing loss. Many modern designs have artificial intelligence that helps block out background noise or communicate with each other to help you hear better. Also, choosing a model that fits your lifestyle will be easier if you consider where (and why) you’ll be using your hearing aids.
It’s essential, in order to compensate for your hearing loss in a reliable way, that you have some of this technology. A tiny 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 isn’t the same thing as a hearing aid
Alright, say this with me: A hearing aid is not the same thing as an amplification device. If you get nothing else from this article, we hope it’s that. Because the manufacturers of amplification devices have a financial interest in convincing the consumer that their devices do what hearing aids do. But that’s untruthful marketing.
Let’s break it down. An amplifier:
- Is often cheaply made.
- Turns up the volume on all sounds.
- Provides the user with little more than simple volume controls (if that).
A hearing aid, conversely:
- Can be molded specifically to your ears for maximum comfort.
- Will help safeguard your hearing health.
- Has batteries that are long lasting.
- Is adjusted specifically to your hearing loss symptoms by a highly qualified hearing specialist.
- Can reduce background noise.
- Can be programmed with different settings for different locations.
- Increases the frequencies that you have a tough time hearing and leaves the frequencies you can hear alone.
- Can pick out and boost specific sound types (like the human voice).
Your ability to hear is too important to go cheap
Everybody has a budget, and that budget is going to restrict your hearing aid choices regardless of what price range you’re looking in.
That’s why we normally highlight the affordable part of this. The long-term benefits of hearing aids and hearing loss treatment are well documented. This is why an affordable solution is what your focus should be. Just remember that your hearing deserves better than “cheap.”