Ear Gizmo Helps Stop Stuttering 40
gregger writes "This little thing that looks like a hearing aid is called a "Speecheasy." It sits in your ear and creates something called the "choral effect" which in essence echoes what the wearer is saying. The real choral effect (i.e. when you recite something in a group like pledges of allegiance or other dark rituals) seems to help people that stutter speak more fluently. The price for this thing is quoted in the KRON TV story as being between $3,600 - $5,100. Porky Pig's insurance won't buy it for him either."
Insurance shouldn't pay for this (Score:1, Interesting)
The price for this thing is quoted in the KRON TV story as being between $3,600 - $5,100. Porky Pig's insurance won't buy it for him either.
Why the hell should someone expect that medical insurance would cover something like this? I have no doubt that people who stutter face prejudice but this isn't really something that insurance should be required to pay for. Insurance doesn't pay for my eyeglasses and I need that a hell of a lot more than someone needs an anti-stuttering device.
I'm sorry if I'm off
Re:Insurance shouldn't pay for this (Score:5, Insightful)
Fuck that. This should be covered, along with LASIK, hearing aids, braces, birth control, and anything else that is not purely cosmetic. My $773 a month in insurance premiums should damn well cover anything I want to improve my direct quality of life.
Don't blame the people that want something to help with their debilitations, blame the industry that sets the financial bar too high with no recourse.
Re:Insurance shouldn't pay for this (Score:4, Insightful)
agrounds - closer but no.
Do not blame doctors for lining their own pockets. 3 groups take all the blame: The American Medical Association, Health Insurance, and Lawyers.
Lawyers: Because every hospital AND every doctor has to have multimillion dollar liability/lawsuit protection. This is why you agrounds, were asked to get with their program or leave. Their insurance company requires that they operate this way. Their lawyers require it. They have to protect themselves from lawsuits. That's why the Ambulance ride cost so much, because they need to be insured against lawsuits. To make matters worse, they have to do everything 3 times and get concurrency/agreement from other doctors all to ward off the lawsuits. So not only are you paying for insurance, you're paying for more doctors time and more procedures all to protect against lawsuits. There goes well over half of your $773 / mo. In this case, it's the legal system that has failed us, not doctors or the medical system.
Health Insurance: Even though drug Foo2 is the best, fastest cure, and the one your doctor actually prescribed to begin with, in order to get coverage you must try drug Foo1 for 60 days first to see if it works because its far cheaper, and hey, it might work, or you might drive off a cliff during those 2 months, either way the insurance co avoids paying for the high cost drug. The stockholders win, the patient loses. OR, you go two months with ineffective meds and you have to pay 2 months of copay to the pharmacist for something you don't even want. The Insurance co ends up covering both drugs, but hey, they only need their strategy to succeed 1 time in 50 for the numbers to work in their favor, because another large hunk of your $773/ mo bill is used to subsidize the priciest 1% of drugs that a few other people need. Don't blame the doctors.
The AMA: Arguably one of the most self-serving immoral group of shucksters ever to organize. The original purpose of the AMA was to lobby for laws that made prescriptions a requirement. Back in the late 1800's before antibiotics, doctors could do about 2 things, set broken bones, and alleviate pain. Got pneumonia? Take some morphine. If you had no broken bones, the only way to get you to go pay a doctor for something was to require BY LAW that you get a prescription for the pain reliever. The next evil thing the AMA did was to make law school extremely selective, long, difficult, and expensive Why does it cost more to become a medical doctor than it does to become a doctor of organic chemistry? Lab fees?? Heck no. Simple, the less doctors there are the more demand there is so the more they can charge. Why does a podiatrist have to learn all about the mucus system and neuro-chemical pathways in the brain, but has to learn almost nothing about nutrition? Simple, to keep the number of podiatrists down. If nutrition was complex enough and had its own arcane language you can bet it would be required as well. Why does an Ear, Nose, & Throat doctor need to learn all about the ovaries? Same reason. That's why medical school takes so damn long. That's why you have to wait months to get in to see a dermatologist. Because there aren't many people who can get into, afford, and then survive the schooling. So there are far too few doctors. Granted that some of this is warranted is some cases, brain surgery for instance. But the process to become a podiatrist or a dermatologist should be nowhere near as long and arduous as the process to become a neurosurgeon. Yet it is for the most part. Low Supply + High Demand = High Price. You ever hear of doctors competing on price?? No way. It's not really their fault though, that's just the way the market works in their case. In fact it's so out of hand now that a cheap doctor isn't thought of as benevolent, he's thought of as a third-rate hack! 99% of doctors, 99% of the medical industry, are not to blame her
Re:Insurance shouldn't pay for this (Score:1)
is a non sequitur. The AMA consists of doctors so yeah, I'm going to blame doctors!
Re:Insurance shouldn't pay for this (Score:1)
I bet that the, "MD who pays $420 a year for JAMA, discounted medical supplies, and a free web page" probably agrees with the whole AMA platform. S/he certainly doesn't disagree enough to attemp any policy changes, that's for sure.
In any case I'm not so sure that the culpability of your average AMA member is so clear cut, especially since they financially benefit from the curren
And WHY... (Score:1)
You can be that if the ambulance crew junp into the river and swim to that drowning child, but she drows anyway, they get sued.
*sigh
Re:Insurance shouldn't pay for this (Score:4, Interesting)
http://www.guerrillanews.com/corporate_crime/doc2
The article details the 1996 testimony in front of the congressional Health and Environment committee of Dr. Linda Peeno. To quote from the introduction,
Obviously this site has an agenda of its own, and I can't say I agree with their conclusions on every matter. In this case however, I believe they have a valid point to make concerning the nature of the health insurance industry.
And to try to add at least an air of topicality to this post, I did notice one thing: this device seems very expensive, even taking into account that it is a medical device and subject to stricter regulations. Hopefully increased production will drive the cost and thus the price down. From what I understand from other posters who have suffered from stuttering, this little thing is like an answer to a prayer. I would hope that every child that needs one will get one, even if they are poor, or their stuttering is a "pre-existing condition".
Re:Insurance shouldn't pay for this (Score:1)
Also note that almost everybody has an additional insurance for costs not covered by social insurance. It costs 40 Euro a year and it covers
Insurance should pay for this, maybe... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not about mere discrimination. It's not about mere disability, although it can be a true disability- My uncle has a stutter so bad that he can barely talk. It takes a long time to get a sentence out. It has severely limited his employability and his lifestyle. It has to do with Money, with wage-earning potential, with the possibility of advancement. This translates into- you guessed it- taxpayer dollars.
In reference to your comment. I agree that LASIK probably shouldn't be covered by health insurance. Eyeglasses ARE covered under an increasing number of plans, though, and should be. (Eyeglasses also don't run into the thousands of dollars, for the most part.) Given the choice between spending $2000 max for this device, and having a person then shoot up an income bracket(or more) of employability, OR leaving the person to spend tens of thousands on speech therapy (have you added up the cost for ten years of learning how to control a stutter?) the US gov. gets off cheap if this can help. A severe stutter changes education, changes willingness to participate in experiences that their peers are involved in, and later in life it can make a college or job interview into hell. And here's the thing- it's now preventable. So when speech therapy isn't working, should health coverage take care of this? Heck, yeah!
This concept applies to a lot of things. It's cheaper for health coverage to buy me a wheelchair, or pay for part of the costs thereof, than to leave to try to buy one on my own- because it keeps me employable, keeps me paying for my own health insurance through work, keeps me paying income taxes. That's a pretty big deal, really. Eyeglasses should be covered for the same reason.
I've found that there are some cases where cosmetic surgery is justified and paid for by health coverage as a quality of life issue. If you view the speech improvement device as a prosthetic- making up for a quality that the person should have but doesn't- it's no different from covering, say, a hearing aid or an artificial voicebox. Or a prosthetic foot. If a person is disfigured or injured in a way which significantly decreases their odds of living a halfway decent life, health coverage will frequently cover the cost of alteration. For example, if a child is born with a severely receding lower jaw, as a friend of mine was, it was not considered cosmetic but reparative surgery. This extends to other forms of therapy- lots of health insurance covers mental therapy and medication for treatable mental illnesses. A stutter isn't a mental illness, it's a brain malfunction. SOmetimes speech therapy works great. Sometimes, as with my uncle, it doesn't help at all. I remember being a child and trying to have conversations with him, wondering whether i was going to end up like that, taking five minutes to finish a sentence. While LASIK could also be considered reparative surgery, it generally isn't because the prosthetics (eyeglasses) are socially accepted to the point of being a norm, contact lenses are available for cosmetic improvement over glasses, and both contacts and glasses are inexpensive enough that many health insurers already cover them. In some cases, free care even covers them. LASIK is also still fairly new. I know that breast implants can be covered in cases of masectomy. I would imagine that as LASIK gets cheaper and more reliable- there are still a lot of errors and i personally know two people who had serious complications (and twelve who had no complications at all)- there may well be insurance that covers it soon.
My main point here is that w
Re:Insurance should pay for this, maybe... (Score:3)
Interesting points. Thanks for your feedback.
GMD
Well said! (Score:3, Interesting)
Insurance should absolutely cover stuttering as it has the potential to cause serious, lifelong problems, yet it is highly treatable (meaning completely or almost completely cured in a high percentage of cases) if treated *immediately* at onset. (Interestingly, the treatment that needs to start immediately is an interesting twist on "do nothing", which sounds like a contradiction, but it's very important and not obvious.) Sometimes treatment doesn't solve the problem completely, but
Re:Insurance shouldn't pay for this (Score:1)
Sounds good. (Score:2, Interesting)
Ob Fish Called Wanda (Score:2, Funny)
It's K-K-K-Ken, c-c-c-coming to k-k-k-kill me! How are you going to c-c-c-catch me, K-K-K-Ken?
Re:Ob Fish Called Wanda (Score:1)
Come to the dark side, Luke! (Score:1, Troll)
I don't stutter, but I want one.
So it sounds like (whisper it with me!) Darth Vader is speaking in unison with me!
<style="intimidating">"You'll get the code when it meets my standards, and not before."</style>
Stuttering Darth Vader (Score:4, Interesting)
It really works! (Score:5, Insightful)
Miniaturization (Score:1)
Essentially, the "Choral Effect" is most likely the same pitch/time shifting technology that we musicians enjoyed since the 70s.
A variation on flangers, the chorus stomp-box was a welcome addition to guitar, keyboard, and vocals (etc.) - but it required a wall-wart or an almost endless supply of 9v batteries.
Re:It really works! (Score:2)
Re:It really works! (Score:2, Insightful)
This statement is not entirely correct, breast implants do have valid medical use and should be covered by medical insurance in many situations. Breast reconstructive surgery after radical mastectomy is a vital technology used to help decrease the stress of surgery in breast cancer patients.
Obviously I do agree that a device like this should be covered too, just like a wheelchair is covered for paraplegics.
Edinburgh masker (Score:5, Funny)
I saw this many years ago on The Tonight Show [johnnycarson.com] (back when they had competent [imdb.com] and funny [imdb.com] people [who2.com] on it, not like [jayleno.com] now [kevineubanks.com]), when they had Mel Tillis [meltillis.com] on. Mel put the ear piece in, switched it on, and stopped stuttering completely.
Of course, Mel Tillis without stuttering is like a flat-chested Dolly Parton.
Sorry, but this is old (Score:2, Informative)
Still, this is great for people who would otherwise have difficulty functioning because of stuttering.
MHO (Score:1)
How expensive is it really to put together something that basicly amplifies the sound you have from your jawbone or mimics you even?
Heck they can do it on computers which costs a whole lot less than $3000, not to mention that a laptop does a heck of a lot more (play doom in class!)
My son has a whisper ear piece which was given to us free which pretty much does the exact same thing. It makes things louder that you put it near, (ie your mouth)
So who is getting all th
Re:MHO (Score:1)
There are TOYS that do nearly the same thing.
Re:MHO (Score:1)
100$ ? Really ... go build your own .. (Score:1)
Oh yeah - don't forget to cover your egineering, marketing, tradeshows, testing, building, etc. Chances are these guys made a limited run of the core unit for 50-100K$, and then customise the shell for the user.
Things are only 2
Promotion for this thing if it works (Score:2, Interesting)
My PC came with a microphone, speakers, and headphones and it can run the trivial signal processing software. This is enough to test if the claims work.
Re:Promotion for this thing if it works (Score:1, Interesting)
Then at least stutter-suffering secretaries or lonely programmers could plug themselves in whenever they need to report to the Big Cheese via telephone.