Agreed on both counts. Wearing hearing aids for essentially my whole life I've been made fun of for it maybe once or twice, and that did suck, but there's so much more stigma in an oticon pamphlet than I've ever experienced in real life. It definitely feels like a pitch aimed at older people who are in denial about losing their hearing, no matter how many pictures of teens chatting in a circle they put in there. Matching colors, assurances that they're unnoticeable, the implication that you need hearing aids to be "normal" (true-ish for me, but still not appreciated), and so on.
Insurance is a joke. Every private insurance plan I've ever had, even my current otherwise decent one, has paid a total of 0% for anything HA-related. And it's not just the hearing aids themselves, it's the tests and the followups and the fittings and on and on. It really adds up. Iirc medicaid actually had decent coverage, but I wasn't paying for it at the time so I don't know have numbers.
Insurance is a joke. Every private insurance plan I've ever had, even my current otherwise decent one, has paid a total of 0% for anything HA-related. And it's not just the hearing aids themselves, it's the tests and the followups and the fittings and on and on. It really adds up. Iirc medicaid actually had decent coverage, but I wasn't paying for it at the time so I don't know have numbers.