Do High Profits Stymie Innovation and Swell Prices? Unsticking Adam Smith’s Hand
“Signal & Noise” is a bimonthly column by Brian Taylor, AuD. Profits are an essential part of a free enterprise system. They provide employees and their families with an income, give shareholders a return, foster innovation and signal where capital needs to be invested in order to improve or grow a business. Profit…
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With a Tale, Forsooth, Northey Cameth Unto Us
The Tom Northey series concludes today, wrapping up his 2000 treatise forecasting the future of our profession.1 He foresaw systematic changes headed straight at us and anticipated questions and issues that would rain down upon us. Northey predicted a world of Audiology survivors and losers, advised Audiologists to look beyond hearing aids for survival strategies, and gave Audiologists common-sense recommendations which we…
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I’ll Take That Bet and Raise You
Our profession was treated last week to a timely and balanced discussion of unbundling by Robyn Cox PhD. She is one of audiology’s most reasoned thinkers, test creator extraordinaire, talented researcher, and a nice person to boot. Dr. Cox addressed concerns being raised in policy-making circles that traditional hearing aid dispensing models are pricing many…
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Private Sector Hearing Aid Costs and Markup
“The success of the final product of services and hearing aid is dependent much more upon our services than it is upon the product. ” Catherine Palmer PhD Audiologists and licensed practitioners believe those words, based on years of experience with patients. That’s why most of us do what we do and charge what we…
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Markup Is an Abused and Misunderstood Term
Last week’s post concluded that hearing aid markup is “roughly keystone: 2x, not the ‘exorbitant’ 5x or even higher markup claimed on the Internet.” The conclusion was based on supporting, albeit sparse, data, which is more than can be said for the 5x claim reproduced in Figure 1. Besides, talking about markup as a multiple is misleading and…
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