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Health insurance companies do not cover hearing aids

Health insurance companies in Massachusetts do not have to cover hearing aids for children, and that can be a burden for some parents. A new bill is trying to change that. Click here to watch Clarke President, Bill Corwin discuss the importance of this legislation. (Air Date: 11.4.09 / 22 News WWLP)

See the video below or watch it directly on Channel 22 News Website.

To view the captions, click the arrow in lower right corner of the player, then click CC to Turn on Captions.  If you prefer, you can read the transcript below.

Transcript for 22 News Report “Health insurance companies do not cover hearing aids”

Reporter: Well on average, each hearing aid costs about $1800 so this bill would require that health insurance companies pay about $1600 of that cost, and that’s really important because that would help a lot families get their children hearing aids a lot earlier in life. Here’s an example, take a look at this video:

Student: She’s as tall as a skyscraper.  She’s called the Statue of Liberty.  All over the world people dream of coming to America to find…

Reporter: That’s Juliet Corwin. She’s deaf, but she got hearing aides when she was an infant.  Now she’s on par with her fellow students in terms of development.  Her father, Bill Corwin, is the President of the Clarke School for the Deaf.  He said this bill needs to be passed because, he says he sees too many cases where kids don’t have access to the proper technology.

Bill Corwin: You get kids who don’t get aided for the first few years of their life and then they may come to us and they have effectively missed a couple of years of development.  As a result, they have that much more catching up to do.

Reporter: And this bill would also help to cover the cost of hearing aid replacement.  And that’s important because that could be quite costly, because hearing aids often need to be replaced every three to five years.

Live in Northampton, I’m Jackie Bruno for 22 News.

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