Why are hearing aids so expensive ? Are they so different technologically from Apple Airpods ?
My wife needs hearing aids. This is an age problem and I'll probably end up needing them myself.
We live in France and reasonable quality hearing aids easily cost €3000. I have no idea what technology goes into them and I have little or any expertise about this (maybe my question proves this decisively), but an Apple Airpod goes into the ear and is used (in a different way, admittedly) to hear things and yet, despite them being considered pretty expensive, they cost between €150 to €600. So between a twentieth and the fifth of the price of hearing aids.
I'm assuming that Airpods and hearing aids have quite a lot in common technologically - I might be wrong.
So I have two questions.
- Are we being scammed ? - Yes, I think we are but maybe not for the reasons I'm thinking of.
- And if we are being scammed why has no one brought a cheap, reliable, hearing aid to market ?
u/rlangenfelt — 8 days ago