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The FDA wants you to be able to buy a hearing aid without a prescription

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Re: The FDA wants you to be able to buy a hearing aid without a prescription

#171

Post by asciimov »

mherdeg wrote: post #159
jrace wrote: post #128

How much would you pay for: *Hearing test * Hearing aid fitting * Usage counselling * Follow up adjustments * Annual retest of your hearing * Replacement of lost hearing aids * Unlimited repair for 3 years ?? ====== I got out of the Audiology field in 2015. At that time all the above was included for every hearing aid we sold (Prices varied from $750 / ear - $3600 / ear. When I was in that field many companies tried…

Hmm, why charge $750 instead of billing $20/month forever and giving new hardware every 3 years?

Easier pill to swallow. People on a fixed income don't want to have their benefits reduced by $20 every single month.

Public healthcare should just cover it.

Re: The FDA wants you to be able to buy a hearing aid without a prescription

#172

Post by radicaldreamer »

tristor wrote: post #84
xmprt wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One pretty big (and relatively unknown) law is that your doctor needs to give you your vision prescription so you can buy glasses elsewhere (usually for much cheaper). I think a lot of them get around this by letting you look for glasses while waiting and not telling you that this law exists.

The bigger issue is that a prescription alone is not enough to order new glasses, you also need pupillary distance measurements in order to ensure the lenses are ground correctly. Many many optometrists will not provide these, only the legally obligated prescription. While for most people who have minimum prescriptions you can use a phone app or similar to get a rough PD, for anyone with serious prescriptions even mi…

I asked about 3 times for a PD measurement at my last exam and they distracted me and failed to put it on the prescription or measure it... didn't realize this was probably intentional

Re: The FDA wants you to be able to buy a hearing aid without a prescription

#173

Post by handrous »

otabdeveloper4 wrote: post #125
tristor wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bigger issue is that a prescription alone is not enough to order new glasses, you also need pupillary distance measurements in order to ensure the lenses are ground correctly. Many many optometrists will not provide these, only the legally obligated prescription. While for most people who have minimum prescriptions you can use a phone app or similar to get a rough PD, for anyone with serious prescriptions even mi…

I'm not in the US; when I got my latest pair of glasses they just used a ruler. It works fine. (Yes, I'm exactly one of those people sensitive to "minute variations".)

I used the "ruler on a mirror, open one eye, center it on the end of the ruler, close it and open the other eye, mark where the center is on the ruler, then read the measurement (in mm)" method. Did it a few times to be sure, exact same results every time, just have to keep your head still and geometry does the work for you. Glasses made using that measurement have been entirely fine, no problems.

Re: The FDA wants you to be able to buy a hearing aid without a prescription

#174

Post by bckygldstn »

throaway46546 wrote: post #134
bckygldstn wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I usually just search for "contact lenses EU", check they ship to US (most will list this in their FAQ) and pick the cheapest. Looking through my email receipts, I've used: lenstore.co.uk visiondirect.co.uk contactsexpress.ca specsavers.co.nz

I found it amusing that none of those are in the EU.

Yeah, I mean EU as in EUrope, not EU as in The European Union.

Re: The FDA wants you to be able to buy a hearing aid without a prescription

#176

Post by treeman79 »

jtwaleson wrote: post #162
treeman79 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I ordered an optometry kit from Amazon as my prescription changes by the hour most days. Was very interesting to play around and helped me isolate the 2 prescriptions that my eyes drift back and forth from. Something that eye doctors had given up on trying to help me.

Cool, that's a great hacker approach! Fine-tuning like this isn't economical for eye doctors, and 99.5% of the population isn't interested but it will give you the best results. Just checking because it looks like you're from '79 and talk about drifting vision: you know about presbyopia and accommodation? You might need multi-focals.

It’s cranial pressure and sixth nerve palsy. As my cranial pressure goes up my horizontal eye nerves weaken causes vision to go double.

Prism glasses fixes this. But it’s a completely different power. +3 goes to -1 or anything in between.

As pressure goes down it reverts. Medication or activity can drop or raise it in an hour or less.

Re: The FDA wants you to be able to buy a hearing aid without a prescription

#177

Post by jrace »

dmurray wrote: post #160
jrace wrote: post #128

How much would you pay for: *Hearing test * Hearing aid fitting * Usage counselling * Follow up adjustments * Annual retest of your hearing * Replacement of lost hearing aids * Unlimited repair for 3 years ?? ====== I got out of the Audiology field in 2015. At that time all the above was included for every hearing aid we sold (Prices varied from $750 / ear - $3600 / ear. When I was in that field many companies tried…

I've long thought the problem with hearing aids is the calibration process. People (often old, confused, and less tech-familiar) try them on and spend half an hour answering questions about "does that sound better?" What if, instead, the calibration process worked constantly? Give the user a button to press when they don't hear something well, and another when they do. Let them have this for a month, let them try it…

THere may be now, but not 5 years ago.

I have many ideas about how the industry can be improved, especially with the use of a smart phone app and user interactions.

Not only is it plausible, but would make the clinicians (fitter) job easier and lead to far more hearing aid sales.

Re: The FDA wants you to be able to buy a hearing aid without a prescription

#180

Post by asciimov »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #165
JCM9 wrote: post #55

There are a number of healthcare areas in the US that have been protected by regulation, but it’s increasingly unclear if this is good for patients, consumers, or public health at large. The increasing sentiment seems to be probably not. Vision care is another area I’d expect to see more changes and disruption coming down the pipeline. Vision care is very important and advanced cases require special skills, but it’s…

Evaluating someone's eye for glasses can be done entirely by machine as can manufacturing the glasses themselves. I do not understand why we still force people to spend 5-10 minutes sitting in a chair in a dark room going "better....no...worse...better..."

The machines can't gauge for personal preference. Many people don't like their vision right at 20/20. I personally like mine closer to 20/15.
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