Invisible’ Impairment
Hear Me Foundation
Congressional Update & Discussion of HR 2329 – Hearing Aid Tax Credit
March 15, 2008
An undetected hearing loss deprives parents of a crucial window of opportunity to develop an infant’s auditory system. It’s hard to spot in infants. “(Hearing impairment) is invisible.” You won’t know until they start to exhibit developmental delays.
We now know that the first six months of a child’s life is really crucial. You have to lay down the neural pathway (related to hearing) in the brain.
When infants born deaf or with profound hearing loss are quickly treated, they have the potential to have the same language skills as normal kids...This also equates to a child succeeding academically.
At the extreme, if several years pass without treatment, a deaf child’s capacity to understand the meaning of sound is lost. They hear sounds, but their brains can’t make sense of it.
Our state rolled out New Born Infant Screening, which was a stepping stone to early intervention. That intervention, though positive, is being derailed and blocked by insurance company’s refusal to pay for hearing aids. Thus, causing a fall out of developmental delays, social out casting, increase in special education services, which in turn are futile, because often times most kids are graduating with a 4th grade education. What kind of a future can we expect? Thus, the creation of the “high-risk” child, doomed to depression and other co-morbid mental health issues that result in devastating consequences for the child, families and the public as a whole.
Instead, our focus in Texas should be to develop a system to make sure once children are screened, they make it through the entire process, which includes hearing aids, cochlear implants and other valuable technology that fosters positive outcomes to society as a whole. “What good is screening if you don’t have the necessary follow-up support and technology in place?”
Currently, our state closely monitors the treatment of more than 90 percent of newborns with severe hearing loss, which if appropriately organized, entails a range of options, including visiting audiologists, learning sign language, using hearing aids for children with residual hearing or cochlear implants.
“If they miss an appointment, someone (from the state) calls to find out why. In comparison, about one-third of infants nationwide detected with hearing impairment are lost to state-run systems monitoring the children’s progress through treatment protocols, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
What even the best screening and follow-up programs can’t catch, however, are those who pass the newborn screening and then later lose their hearing, because of genetics, illness or an injury.
This was the case with my daughter Taylor, who had an undiagnosed progressive hearing loss at birth. She was a victim of misdiagnosis that had we not pursued with diligence was already scored with a number of other disabilities other than hearing loss. The importance to our detection and the beauty of sound was realized and taken for granted by those who do not fully comprehend hearing loss. However, for a mother of a 3-year old child speaking through a “loaned assistive listening device” I being that mother, spoke to my daughter and I asked her: “Taylor can you Hear Me?”…..and in response my daughter replies: “Momma, where have you been?” The once lost child found hiding in closets, experienced outrages of temper tantrums and anger; the child within emerged with enthusiasm and obviously the comfort of hearing her mothers voice, my voice.
When we fail to ignore the obvious, it is like turning a blind eye to a stranger badly beaten in the street. We simply step over; or cross the street to avoid the obvious. Our children and the millions of adults who suffer from hearing loss are in fact no stranger to the many family members, co-workers, neighbors, friends, classmates; who desire the ability and the need to communicate. It was Helen Keller herself who said of her two disabilities “blindness and deafness;” it was deafness that was the more debilitating because vision isolates you from “things,” but hearing loss isolates you from “people. When children and late deafened adults are robbed the ability to obtain hearing aids, we are effectively casting them out; and sending them into a life and world of isolation. I could not and will not deprive my daughter; and others the mere ability to live an independent life whereby you have been given the opportunity to share your thoughts, feelings wants and desires. Such a simple gesture as to order a Number 2 with a Diet Coke at McDonalds.
Texas is no different from any other state and we gathered here today are just a small special interest group who have more than a dozen stories of children and adults who have a hearing impairment and it is our goal to pass the Hearing Aid Tax Credit. No child or adult should be forced into a world of silence and isolation, simply because their private insurance company fails to cover the cost of hearing aids. Hearing aids usually cost about $3,000 per ear. I see this first Hand through the Hear Me Foundation, whereby this past Christmas we provided a 7-year old boy in Houston his 1st pair of hearing aids. Curiously, this child’s hearing loss had been diagnosed 7 months prior to our donation. The reality, this child was acting out in school. He had fallen behind those of his peers both socially and academically. Yet, despite this knowledge; despite this hardship; despite the parents inability to afford to properly screen, fit and provide their child with the necessary hearing aids, this child was allowed to continue to suffer.
Such suffering is easily repairable by ensuring that insurance companies are required to adhere to the medical necessity in covering hearing aids for all children; and adults who suffer from a hearing loss.
Thank you!
Tamala Irish
President and Director
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