We have advanced so much in the last 30 years

that I think hearing aids should be cheap. But NO!!! They still charge for the hearing aids like it's 1960 technology. I swear to gawd, if someone opened up a hearing aid center like these one hour optical stores, they would make a million. (I am talking REAL hearing aids being provided by a REAL audiologists!! Not the miracle ear crap!!)

The newest technology is expensive when it's introduced, and then the price decreases. It seems to follow the standard path for new electronics.

Hearing aids aren't cheap, but they're certainly not something only the wealthiest can afford. Perhaps the reason they aren't more affordable isn't the lack of a One Hour Hearing Aid chain but rather that the numbers of customers aren't comparable to the number getting glasses. I've become something of a hearing-aid evangelist since I got mine, but I keep running into people who insist that they're "not ready for that yet". Hearing aids still have some kind of social stigma attached to them, which glasses have lost.

I don't think anything would bring hearing aids down to the price range of glasses, simply because of the difference in technology, but that's a different problem.