Early Intervention

The audiologist from Buffalo Speech and Hearing called today (I love her). She gave us all the phone numbers to call to see about assistance for hearing aids. Health Insurance, unfortunately, does not cover hearing aids (even for prelingual kids with permanent hearing loss). There is a bill before the NY State Senate at the moment regarding this, but even if approved it would not go into effect until July 2008. Too late for us, anyway!

We have to call Social Security to get officially denied for Medicaid. We don't qualify, but you have to get the official denial before you can apply for state aid. Then we apply for state aid- if we qualify we should get some reimbursement. If we don't qualify through them, then it is just out-of-pocket. We have plenty of family to help us pay for hearing aids, but it would be nice to get some help here! I am also going to call our insurance company (Univera) to see if I can persuade them to cover hearing aids. It probably won't work, but is worth a shot!

I called Early Intervention and after some discussion (do you want to wait for his aids before starting therapy?- NO!) we decided on November 8 as the day to start the paperwork for Nolan's EI. He qualifies due to having a permanent disability as opposed to having a developmental delay. The coordinator said we'll probably only have visits once per month since Nolan is so young, and they'll evaluate how often he needs visits as he gets older. At least that ball is rolling!

Now off to call Social Security so we can get our official denial letter (oh, the bureaucracy)!