A question...is the Cochlear implant made for the hearing or for the deaf?

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AlleyCat said:
I don't see a heart transplant as a luxury. That's a medical necessity.
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Oh, yes it is. Only rich patients can afford it so they can live longer. That's a luxury.
 
CrazyPaul said:
Oh, yes it is. Only rich patients can afford it so they can live longer. That's a luxury.
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huh? where can they buy a heart?

many rich patients have died waiting to be next on the list.
 
ambrosia said:
no lol, just wondered if it had crossed your mind :D I think the only people who "pay" for it is someone who actually pays for it out of pocket. They're freaking expensive, that's like 5-7 years worth of premiums, or more.

But really, why do have such a problem with having people getting help getting implanted. No, I'm not needling you, I'm honestly curious of your reasons.
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same here. I have absolutely no problem with having my tax money being used to help these people. share a burden. help each other out. you scratch my back, I scratch your back.
 
CrazyPaul said:
Oh, yes it is. Only rich patients can afford it so they can live longer. That's a luxury.
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A doctor would be the one to determine if you need a new heart. You don't just "opt" to get one just because you want one. Health insurance (assuming you have health insurance) pays for heart transplants. It is not limited to the "rich patients".
 
ambrosia said:
no lol, just wondered if it had crossed your mind :D I think the only people who "pay" for it is someone who actually pays for it out of pocket. They're freaking expensive, that's like 5-7 years worth of premiums, or more.
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Correct. I get copies of what the insurance pays for my medical issues. For the first implant in 2003, $60K was paid to the doctor & hospital. Second one, $82K was paid to the doctor & hospital. Broken down, the doctor only got $2500 for a couple hours of surgery. Hospital got about $6K. The rest went to Cochlear.

Ironically, Cochlear only charges taxpayers about $20K for the same thing on a Medicaid patient. Go figure.

There is a catch, though. These days employers must disclose the average age of employees, the average costs paid for those employees by previous insurance agencies, risk factors, employee health, etc, in order to get the best rates available.

My previous employer was terrible at people skills, and told all the employees that "because many of you are over the age of 40, made a lot of claims in the last two years, 25% of you are smokers, 75% of you are overweight and at high risk for strokes, we have no choice but to increase premiums by 50%"

So, yes, even though I had insurance pay for my CI, the cost is being absorbed partly by other employees in the same company. One employee was in the hospital for a month with a serious condition, racked up nearly a mil in bills, and that was a big factor in the premium increase.

Get this...I was paying nearly $200 per week (yes, per week) for medical coverage PLUS an $8K deductible, and it increased an average of 25% per year. So, in essence, no one really gets any CI's for free. I still have to pay for the CI one way or another.

I don't care if anyone gets a CI, but I do have an issue with doctors putting CI's in questionable patients without doing any research on the individual. Come on, they only looked at me for 15 minutes after a hearing test and a CI scan to tell me that I qualify. I spent weeks doing research. Not many folks can do that, or know how to ask the right questions.

Bottom line....money is what makes the world turn.
 
Jiro said:
same here. I have absolutely no problem with having my tax money being used to help these people. share a burden. help each other out. you scratch my back, I scratch your back.
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I have an itch on my butt........
 
green427 said:
I have an itch on my butt........
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* hesitating*

ok.... I will.... scratch it for you..... as long as you will help me wipe my ass if I have IBS :aw:
 
Jiro said:
* hesitating*

ok.... I will.... scratch it for you..... as long as you will help me wipe my ass if I have IBS :aw:
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Me too! You scratch, I will wipe. I get to use nitrile gloves, though. :giggle:

(groan)...
 
green427 said:
To add to my post above:

The CI is NOT an answer to all deaf people. Because I did my research, I felt it was worth the risk to give it a shot, and I am glad I did.

There are deaf people that will not benefit from HA's or CI's. Does that mean I am in a better position than they are? Of course not. Even if I did not have CI's, I would still be looking for ways to overcome.
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0vercome what?!
 
Jiro said:
therefore your argument is invalid.
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JIRO!!! you doing that judgemental shit again, stop it!

hard headed as you are, but you have to realise you do NOT know Everything.

chill out the attitude
 
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green427 said:
My opinion? The CI was invented as a tool that should help people hear when HA's fail to satisfy them.

We are human beings. We have organs that serve a specific purpose. Our eyes let us see, our ears let us hear, our knees let us be mobile, etc, etc.

Glasses were invented to help us see better. Artifical limbs were invented to help us move around better. CI's were invented to help us hear better.

As for the CI being a factor in cultural differences....(deaf vs hearing)......it is being used as an excuse to create mass hysteria, as evident by this forum.

Take a look at the figures. If 90% of CI recipients are happy with the decision to be implanted, including teenagers that were implanted as toddlers.....and if 10% are unhappy, does that mean CI's are a bad thing?

Some members here are gun fans. They view guns as a tool for survival. If 90% of the population has no issues with guns, should guns be considered evil and banned because 10% of the population uses them in the wrong way?

See where I am going? It is not the CI itself you should be wondering about, it is the people around you that are the problem. The medical community will push for CI's in the wrong recipients. Manufacturers will push for them. Humans are making decisions, and you know that saying...all humans are full of shit often.

.

There are many hearing individuals that can't speak well. I don't believe that good speech is 100% dependent on hearing yourself....our language skills are taught, so if you were not taught how to speak correctly, you are going to speak what you think is the right way, even if you don't sound right.

I have a handful of old friends that are 100% deaf since birth, and their speech is immaculate....and impossible for hearing people to fathom. My speech is the same with or without hearing anything...a result of years of therapy.



Two separate questions, which have no relation to each other.

Efficiency of the CI? Varies among individuals, just like HA's. There are no guarantees.

The CI was made to help deaf people hear, period. How you interpret the end result is up to you.



Personality has a lot to do with it. I am one of those people who is never satisfied, always looking for answers, always looking for better ways, etc. I was hearing until 4 years old, became deaf, wore HA's, and even though I could hear with my HA's, it was never enough. Could not understand spoken speech, but could hear music in a limited way. The CI is a tool that will help me in that area.

Convenience: Hearing people view deaf people as a big inconvenience, as we require them to change their way of communicating. It is a fact of life, period.

Curiosity is my trait. I want to know what sounds are, what causes them, and why.

In order for me to make myself more attractive to employers, etc, I must make myself very convenient. I don't expect them to spend money on interpreters and take the extra time to communicate with me. The CI is a tool that will help me in that area. Do you really think employers want an employee that costs them extra money, especially when there are a thousand others to choose from?

Do I want to live off welfare and live in a Section 8 housing complex? No, I want to do better than that. In order to do better than that, I have to make myself valuable to employers. The CI helps me get through certain situations.


There are deaf people out there that will read my statements above and think I am nuts or full of shit. I don't care. This is who I am. And there are many like me. I don't hang out with people because of their background status; I hang out with good people, period. I don't shun anyone because of their race, color, religion, or disability.

Just because you are happy in your own small world, it does not mean everyone else must live like you do.
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where did you get thsi crap from?
sorry you havent got a clue about me, i have freinds in the gutter, in the mountains, in the mansions, in the highrise penthouse, in an ordinary 2 story family home, in a flat...


as bolded about Ci helps you for a better situation, its this to do with comformity, or access, do es Ci makes you richer because of better jobs prospects - is this what you're implying?
 
green427 said:
My opinion? The CI was invented as a tool that should help people hear when HA's fail to satisfy them.

We are human beings. We have organs that serve a specific purpose. Our eyes let us see, our ears let us hear, our knees let us be mobile, etc, etc.

Glasses were invented to help us see better. Artifical limbs were invented to help us move around better. CI's were invented to help us hear better.

As for the CI being a factor in cultural differences....(deaf vs hearing)......it is being used as an excuse to create mass hysteria, as evident by this forum.

Take a look at the figures. If 90% of CI recipients are happy with the decision to be implanted, including teenagers that were implanted as toddlers.....and if 10% are unhappy, does that mean CI's are a bad thing?

Some members here are gun fans. They view guns as a tool for survival. If 90% of the population has no issues with guns, should guns be considered evil and banned because 10% of the population uses them in the wrong way?

See where I am going? It is not the CI itself you should be wondering about, it is the people around you that are the problem. The medical community will push for CI's in the wrong recipients. Manufacturers will push for them. Humans are making decisions, and you know that saying...all humans are full of shit often.

.

There are many hearing individuals that can't speak well. I don't believe that good speech is 100% dependent on hearing yourself....our language skills are taught, so if you were not taught how to speak correctly, you are going to speak what you think is the right way, even if you don't sound right.

I have a handful of old friends that are 100% deaf since birth, and their speech is immaculate....and impossible for hearing people to fathom. My speech is the same with or without hearing anything...a result of years of therapy.



Two separate questions, which have no relation to each other.

Efficiency of the CI? Varies among individuals, just like HA's. There are no guarantees.

The CI was made to help deaf people hear, period. How you interpret the end result is up to you.



Personality has a lot to do with it. I am one of those people who is never satisfied, always looking for answers, always looking for better ways, etc. I was hearing until 4 years old, became deaf, wore HA's, and even though I could hear with my HA's, it was never enough. Could not understand spoken speech, but could hear music in a limited way. The CI is a tool that will help me in that area.

Convenience: Hearing people view deaf people as a big inconvenience, as we require them to change their way of communicating. It is a fact of life, period.

Curiosity is my trait. I want to know what sounds are, what causes them, and why.

In order for me to make myself more attractive to employers, etc, I must make myself very convenient. I don't expect them to spend money on interpreters and take the extra time to communicate with me. The CI is a tool that will help me in that area. Do you really think employers want an employee that costs them extra money, especially when there are a thousand others to choose from?

CI's costs ALOT to make and implant, and the on-going aspect of it, listening and speech training, it could be arguable that costs for terps, job accomodation, slight modification to communicate in work places, like flash alarms in installed (which should be standard for hearing people too, as noisy places), probably there is already but should be more standardised if this to make more sense, job training costs is not going to alot more, especially if the Deaf employ is capable, like why would then they be considered for work in first place?? its their skills they're selling, not their deafness

Do I want to live off welfare and live in a Section 8 housing complex? No, I want to do better than that. In order to do better than that, I have to make myself valuable to employers. The CI helps me get through certain situations.


There are deaf people out there that will read my statements above and think I am nuts or full of shit. I don't care. This is who I am. And there are many like me. I don't hang out with people because of their background status; I hang out with good people, period. I don't shun anyone because of their race, color, religion, or disability.

Just because you are happy in your own small world, it does not mean everyone else must live like you do.
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.
 
TXgolfer said:
I thought this thread was set up for everyone to express their view openly. Not express and receive criticism.
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you call that a criticism? :eek3:
 
Grummer said:
JIRO!!! you doing that judgemental shit again, stop it!

hard headed as you are, but you have to realise you do NOT know Everything.

chill out the attitude
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you know I was referring to CrazyPaul's wild claim about rich people and heart transplants?
 
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