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Quebec's hearing aid plan for seniors only covers 1 ear. Critics are calling for change
Quebec's hearing aid plan for seniors only covers 1 ear. Critics are calling for change

CBC

time17-05-2025

  • Health
  • CBC

Quebec's hearing aid plan for seniors only covers 1 ear. Critics are calling for change

Seniors experiencing hearing loss in Quebec are calling on the province to reverse a long-standing policy that compensates them for only one hearing aid, even if they need two — one for each ear. "It's an insult. It's really not fair, and I think it should stop. It should be that you're allowed to have two hearing aids," Martha Perusse, a 71-year-old with hearing loss, told CBC in an interview. For decades, Quebec's health insurance board, the Régie de l'assurance maladie du Québec (RAMQ), has covered the cost of two hearing aids — one for each ear — for children 18 and under, adults who need hearing aids for their studies or work and people who are also visually impaired. But for anyone else — mainly seniors and unemployed adults — the RAMQ only covers the cost of one hearing aid, even when someone requires them for both ears. "How does that make any sense?" Marina Souranis, an NDG resident who wears hearing aids and who's set to retire next month, told CBC in an interview. Souranis has used hearing aids since she started experiencing hearing loss in her 30s. One for each ear was always covered by the government. Now she'll see her coverage reduced to covering the cost of just one hearing aid when she retires. "It's bizarre. Instead of giving you things when you retire, they take things away," Souranis said. Perusse says "it was like a slap in the face" when she realized she wasn't going to have two hearing aids covered. She ended up paying out of her own pocket so she could have a hearing aid for each ear. But she wasn't happy about it. "I had done good work all my life and I was continuing to do good work as a volunteer," Perusse said. "I think people our age should still be considered valuable members of society." 'Having 2 ears is not a luxury' Quebec's order of hearing aid specialists, the Ordre des audioprothésistes du Québec (OAQ), and Hear Quebec, an advocacy group for people living with hearing loss that serves primarily Quebec's anglophone community, are calling on the province to cover the cost of two hearing aids for everyone who needs them. "Having two ears is not a luxury. It's just a basic need in terms of hearing correction," OAQ president David Gélinas told CBC. "It's important to correct both ears in order to restore localization, to have better performance and basically to be more comfortable," he said. Heidy Wager, president of Hear Quebec, says one hearing aid is "like wearing one prescription glass lens and then still expecting to see properly." WATCH | Cut to coverage: Gélinas said the most basic hearing aids cost $1,500 per ear. "The majority of our members are seniors on fixed income and can't afford that," Wager said. "They're left behind. They fall through the cracks. We have to look at our population right now — it's aging, and hearing loss is huge," Wager said. The OAQ estimates expanding coverage would cost the province $133 million over five years. Gélinas said that would be money well spent. "We know that hearing loss is linked to an increased risk of cognitive decline, increased risk of falls, increased risk of depression," he said. Wager notes all of those things combined have a significant impact on our health-care system. Hearing aids a social lifeline Wager said hearing aids are also an important way for seniors to remain connected to the world. "There's already a huge issue and stigma around accepting that you have a hearing loss," she said. "So that in itself is a barrier. And now the government only supplying one out of two is another barrier." Perusse says many seniors also already have trouble adapting to wearing hearing aids. "They just don't have the confidence to put up with it for a couple of weeks until they can adapt," she said. "I really believe that two hearing aids will help people to adapt faster, and then they'll continue to wear them." Wager said seniors with hearing loss tend to isolate themselves, and that effective hearing aids can help prevent that. "If you want to be socially active and included in your community and part of family gatherings, then you're most likely going to want to purchase that second hearing aid," she said. Quebec more generous than other provinces Sonia Bélanger, the minister responsible for seniors, did not respond to CBC's request for comment. But a spokesperson for Bélanger told Radio-Canada that the province was looking at "modernizing" the funding model for hearing aids, but was not ready to discuss details. Wager said while RAMQ covering only one hearing aid for seniors doesn't make sense and should be changed, the situation is even worse in other provinces. "For treatment of hearing loss, we are one of the better provinces in terms of getting hearing aids and having different options," she said. Ontario offers coverage for two hearing aids for seniors, but the coverage maxes out at $500 per device, which overall is less generous than Quebec. Most other provinces only subsidize the cost of hearing aids for some low-income seniors. "More than a billion people across the world have a hearing loss right now. It's huge and it's not going anywhere," Wager said.

The Eargo 8 Are Super Lightweight OTC Hearing Aids With Prescription-Level Pricing
The Eargo 8 Are Super Lightweight OTC Hearing Aids With Prescription-Level Pricing

WIRED

time14-05-2025

  • WIRED

The Eargo 8 Are Super Lightweight OTC Hearing Aids With Prescription-Level Pricing

More importantly, there is no indication of battery life in the app. Like the Eargo 7, the Eargo 8 claims an impressive 16 hours of running time (plus a whopping 224 more hours of charge in the slightly larger carrying case), but there's no way to tell where you're at until the battery nears empty. The good news is it's hard to exhaust 16 full hours of operation in one go. In my testing, I could only drain the battery fully by leaving the aids out of the case overnight. Iffy Software Photograph: Eargo I've complained (twice before) about Eargo's rocky audiogram training system, which uses ultrasonic signals from your phone to communicate with the hearing aids rather than wireless tech like Bluetooth. It keeps the hearing aids very small because they don't need a Bluetooth radio to work. Eargo is not unique in using this tech, but its implementation remains iffy, even after years on the market. My training session took nearly half an hour because the hearing aids missed a large portion of the ultrasonic signals, causing them to fail to send a tone to my ears when they should have. That's a big problem, because there's no telling whether you couldn't hear the tone because you're going deaf or because the hearing aids failed to register the signal properly. I found training more frustrating than ever this time around. That same technology is also used to control the aids via app commands. While it's not as big a deal if a volume change is missed and you have to send the request again, it's still a pain (especially if one hearing aid gets the signal and the other does not). It also means you can't use these aids for streaming over Bluetooth, which is a bigger issue today than ever. At this point, it's probably time for Eargo to explore something more reliable, even if it means selling a larger device. The units support physical double-taps on the ear, but only to switch among the three environmental programs you can choose in the app. The taps registered reliably in my testing, though I didn't notice much difference among the various modes. The aids are plenty comfortable, in part because of their very light weight, though Eargo's ear tips are a little on the itchy side. After a few hours of wear, I invariably had to remove them to give my ears some time to recover. (Oddly, only three pairs of ear tips are included: small, medium, and large, with open vents.) The Eargo 8 aids are not cheap, now running $2,699 per pair. (The Eargo 7 aids now cost $2,399.) While Eargo products have always been expensive, in today's market, a near-$3,000 asking price puts these aids almost into prescription pricing territory, which is difficult to justify. The Eargo 8 aids remain excellent in audio quality, and the small size is perfect, but the upgrades here are simply not enough to merit this kind of price, given the surfeit of equally excellent over-the-counter competitors available for less.

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