Battle for Hearing Aid Coverage: New Jersey

The Courier Post has a story about nine year old deaf twins who use hearing aids, that are fighting to get Grace's Law, a law to provide at least partial coverage for hearing aids for children, passed in New Jersey. The article says they have been trying to get this law passed since 1999.

Now that I have a cochlear implant, I view the lack of insurance coverage as even MORE unfair than I did before. It is unfair because functionally, a cochlear implant and a hearing aid are the same! Both serve the same purpose - to allow a deaf or hard of hearing person to hear sounds and try to make sense out of them. The main difference is that one, the implant, is considered a prosthesis, and the other is not. As a prosthesis, an implant is usually covered by insurance, while hearing aids are not.

I paid less than $200 total for my cochlear implant (including surgery) because the bulk of the cost was covered by insurance. Why should the parents of a deaf or hard of hearing child who *can* benefit from hearing aids, be penalized financially because their child can hear with hearing aids? I know that already, there are some deaf adults, who, faced with the choice between cochlear implants and hearing aids, opt for cochlear implants for financial reasons - they don't have enough money for hearing aids. I do not know if there are any parents who are choosing cochlear implants for their children for similar financial reasons, but I would not be surprised if there are. If there are any parents out there who chose implants over hearing aids in part because implants were covered by their insurance while hearing aids for their child were not, I would be interested in hearing from them.