The Question of Cost

I wanted to take a couple of posts to explain everything that we have learned about funding Abigail's treatment and hearing aids. This first post I will talk solely about the overall cost and insurance policies, while I will try to provide as much information about state-funded assistance programs in the next post.

Shortly after Abigail's HOH diagnosis we had a meeting with our caseworker to discuss our insurance and how we intended to fund the purchase of Abigail's hearing aids. Since Abigail has a bilateral loss (a hearing loss in both ears) we would be purchasing two hearing aids in addition to two ear molds (click here for an interesting article on ear molds). Hearing aids range in price from $1000 USD for a quality basic hearing aid to over $3000 USD for a state of the art hearing instrument. The Oticon hearing aids that were chosen for Abigail, the VIGO PRO, cost approximately $2000 per hearing aid. This makes our total about $3600 for her aids alone.

The cost of an ear mold impression ranges from about $80 USD to $175 USD depending on the material that the ear mold is constructed from. The cost is constructed of two sub costs--the cost of the actual impression being taken by an audiologist and the cost that the company charges for the construction of the ear mold. Dayton Childrens' Audiology department sends their ear mold impressions to a company in Pennsylvania called Microsonic. The cost of Abby's ear molds are $100 a piece, bringing our grand total for ear molds and aids to $4200.

Although the financial cost was overwhelming to us, we were certain that our insurance would be there for our daughter and help pay a portion of the cost. This is where our caseworker began to explain that most insurance providers do not pay for hearing aids, regardless of whether they are for children. I found this fact absolutely appalling and plan on writing more about this later on, but lucky for us we had one of the few insurance providers that paid for hearing aids in full. The only stipulation is that the child must possess a hearing loss significant enough to affect proper speech development. We would not be required to pay any portion of her hearing aids, which was a relief to us.

Since we an Active Duty Air Force family we have the military insurance program, Tricare. While most Active Duty families have free healthcare at military treatment facilities, we have chosen to pay out of pocket for a more PPO style Tricare program. However, it wouldn't have mattered which Tricare option we had chosen because Tricare is one of the few insurance providers that pay for hearing aids. In the next post I will talk about Ohio's state funded program, BCMH, that can help parents of deaf and HOH children whose insurance does not provide the same financial help that we were lucky to have.