I had my hearing tested in the spring, mostly to stop my wife asking. The result came back fine. The price list on the counter was the interesting part.
Four thousand dollars for a fitted pair. That was the number for a decade, and almost no one argued with it.
You paid it in a clinic or you went without.
The paperwork moved first. In August 2022 the FDA created a category for hearing aids sold over the counter. The rule took effect that October.
No exam. No prescription. No fitting appointment, for mild to moderate loss.
Then everyone waited. A rule does not stock a shelf.
It took two more years for the number on the counter to really move. In September 2024 the FDA cleared a hearing aid feature running on a pair of consumer earbuds.
Today an over-the-counter pair runs somewhere between two hundred dollars and twenty five hundred. Fitted in a clinic, the range starts where the shelf ends.
30 million
American adults living with some degree of hearing loss
1 in 5
Share of those who could benefit who seek any help at all
$249
Price of the earbuds the FDA cleared as a hearing aid in 2024
So the device stopped being the scarce thing. Which moves the question to what is.
A hearing aid out of a box still has to be matched to your ears. Somebody runs the test, programs the thing, and sees you again when it whistles.
That hour is what got scarce.
Almost all of this comes out of your own pocket. There is no line for it in most household budgets. The four thousand dollar version simply did not happen for a lot of people.
The two hundred dollar version happens. It happens badly about half the time, and then somebody has to fix it.
The aisles the cohort spends down, read through what one rule change did to each.
The practice two towns over from me stopped selling boxes and started selling the hour.
It charges for the test, the programming, and the follow-up visit. The device you can bring in yourself, off a shelf or out of a phone.
The trade there is real money. A practice that used to clear two thousand dollars on a fitted pair now bills for ninety minutes.
Volume has to rise a long way to cover that gap. Plenty of people who buy a box never walk in at all. The ones who do are shopping the hour on price.
The arithmetic
Hearing loss prevalence and the share of people who seek help: US Food and Drug Administration, OTC hearing aids consumer guidance. The over-the-counter category: FDA final rule published 17 August 2022, effective 17 October 2022. Clearance of a hearing aid feature on consumer earbuds at $249: FDA, 12 September 2024. Price ranges for 2026, both over the counter and clinic-fitted, and the roughly four thousand dollar pre-rule pair: National Hearing Institute pricing survey, 2026. The hearing test on the counter in the opening is mine.
My hearing is fine for now. The man who tested it shrugged and told me to come back in three years. The rule that mattered has already passed, and the box is already on the shelf. Eventually I will be in the chair like everybody else in that waiting room. Somebody will bill for the hour, and it will be worth it.
Andrew
Boomers Trade is written by someone getting older right alongside you, and watching who profits from it.
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