If you’re in the market for new hearing aids, it’s always best to start with an audiologist. But if you’re already a hearing-aid user, and your old hearing aids are still okay, you might want to do some research first.

I have an Advanced Bionics cochlear implant and a Phonak hearing aid, made by the same parent company, Sonova. Phonak has a well-reviewed new AI-generated speech-in-noise program, and I was tempted to try it. My old hearing aid was adequate, but hearing better in noise would make a huge difference in my life. It would be an investment though, and before I pursued it with my audiologist, I wanted to see how substantial an investment it would be.

With most big-ticket items these days, consumers comparison shop, usually on the web. Since we are talking $6000-$7000 per pair for top tier hearing aids. I took to the internet to see what I could find out. It was a pretty wild ride. I wrote about it on the excellent health-care cost site ClearHealthCosts. You can link to it here.

My search focused on the new Phonak line, but the experience points to the widespread difficulties in finding prices for hearing aids.

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For more about living with hearing loss, read my memoir Shouting Won’t Help, and for more practical advice try Smart Hearing. Both are available as Kindle or paperback.