Just $1.27 for Insurance Coverage

From the newsroom of the WTMJ-TV, Channel 4 News, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Tuesday, February 19, 2008 …..

On Deaf Ears Folo
by John Mercure

Some deaf Wisconsin children continue to go without the tools that could bring sounds to their silent world.

Insurance companies refuse to pay for hearing aid coverage saying it would raise everyone’s rates. The reality is that the costs would be less than the cost of one Sunday newspaper. That’s what it would cost each policy holder in Wisconsin annually to provide hearing aids to deaf children.

Two and half year old Abigail Brensel needs a $ 100,000 cochlear implant to enter the hearing world, which most of us take for granted. Her insurance doesnt cover it, so Abigail remains in a quiet world.

Ann Brensel, Abigail’s mother recently told us, “We know there’s help out there for our daughter but we aren’t able to access it. We don’t have the funds to pay out of pocket.”

Studies show that forcing insurance companies to cover hearing aids and cochlear implants for kids like Abigail would cost the average policy holder $1.27 per year.

“The children can’t speak for themselves at such a young age and it’s about the children,” Brensel frustratingly told us.

Representative Frank Lasee chairs the insurance committee where the bill is stalled. “I know it’s difficult for them. It’s hard. There are other out of pocket costs that people cover that their insurance doesn’t. This is one of them,” lasee recently told us in Madison.

Coverage for child hearing aids would cost each of us $1.27 per year. Experts say without those hearing aids it cost upwards of one million dollars to educate and subsidize a deaf child who grows into a deaf member of our society.

It would seem to be money well spent to get our hard of hearing kids the help they need now.

© 2008, Journal Broadcast Group, a Journal Communications Inc. company