Cochlear Implants Are Miraculous and Maddening “You’ll never be
deaf,” my longtime ear doctor, Ronald Hoffman, said to me years
ago. At the time, I thought he meant I’d never lose all my
hearing. What I know now is that technology would take over when
my ears no longer worked. Through a cochlear implant, I would
continue to hear long after my ears ceased to function. Cochlear
implants have been available in the U.S. since 1984, but only a
very small minority of the deaf and hearing impaired has them.
The Food and Drug Administration estimates that 250,000
Americans (out of 48 million with hearing loss) could benefit
from a cochlear implant. As of December 2010, only 71,000 people
had one. Medicare, Medicaid in many states and most private
insurers cover the cost of more than $75,000. (Very few cover
the cost of hearing aids, from $2,000 to $6,000 apiece, and even
then the reimbursement is paltry.) A cochlear implant consists
of three components: a microphone to pick up sound from the
environment; a speech pro