Thursday, April 17, 2008

Why Isn't Cochlear Implantee Using Hir CI to Talk on Regular Phone?

What good will be for Jamie Berke and other CI users if they could not use the regular phone to communicate with someone on the end of phone? What point for having the mega-expensive cochlear implant device and invasive surgery in the first place? What a waste for the health insurance company or the Medicaid program to pay for the cochlear implant device and costly surgery! *groan*

Please check out Jamie Berke's latest blog about her personal frustration with the federal "Do Not Call Registry" which it designs to block any incoming telemarketer calls.

Unfortunately, the screenings of relay calls to be misconstructed as "telemarketer call". At least, Berke raised such an awareness about our relay calls misinterpreted as "telemarketer call". How can be possible for the relay calls ended up misdiagnosed as telemarketer call?

Jamie Berke and other CI users ought not to waste our American taxpayers' hard-earned monies and health insurance payees' "considerable high" health insurance premiums (fees) IF they could not possibly communicate on regular phones. Whoa!

We should rally our elected leaders to slash the public funding for cochlear implant surgery on deaf children thru the state Medicaid programs within the 2008 presidential election. Same thing to put the pressures on health insurance providers and hospitals and the American Medical Association (AMA) to halt the health insurance coverages on cochlear implant devices and surgery. So the deaf community will be not widely disfranchised due to abnormal technological presence in human beings.

Let's send the future medical bills from cochlear implant surgery and device to the Alexander Graham Bell Association of the Deaf (AgBAD) to bankrupt this audistic organization for all good.

For our own sake, we are in the weakening national economy right now. Cochlear implant device and surgery are not part of the basic necessity. They are the luxury items! Nothing to do with the basic human functions for everyday lives.

Robert L. Mason (RLM)