Couple hundred bucks and you have a decent "professional car door jimmy kit" $10 and you have a lock pick set. I can't speak for everywhere in the US but where I live you drop the cash and you can buy the tools. Possession of the tool isn't illegal. It's the way it's used. The same way a gun is a tool if used for certain purposes (i.e. hunting or target practice). Use it in an improper manner and suffer legal ramifications.

I have one digital hearing aid (unilateral hearing loss) that set me back $3178.

I initially thought this was expensive. I think there are a lot of factors that go into the cost though and have since changed my opinion.

First you have the hearing aid itself. Sure it's just a piece of plastic, a couple microphones, a speaker, and some subminiature electronic components that process the sound and amplify it. Maybe you could design such a thing in your garage for less but I'll speak of this more later.

There are R&D costs associated with developing new algorithms and technologies. Even if the technologies exist shrinking them/being able to fit them can't be free. Maybe this is partially an excuse for me to justify why I had to pay such a cost for an amplifier.

Marketing and distribution by the hearing aid manufacturers.

I think the biggest cost is from what happens after you have the hearing aid. Programming and after sale service. After I received my hearing aid I made 6 trips to the audiologist for fine tuning. And I could use more (I'm out of the country so that's not reasonable right now). The $3178 cost included the time the Audiologist spent testing my hearing, discussing options with me, taking a mold, tweaking the fit of the aid physically and then programming. It was a time consuming process.

People of /. are not your average person. So yes a large percentage could potentially design and build a hearing aid.

That would be the exception and not the rule though. Are you building it for yourself or someone else? If for someone else how much do you know about hearing loss and how are you going to tweak the amplification curve for the person's hearing? How are you going to adjust for annoying sounds like silverware hitting a plate or crumpling plastic?

Since I'm out of the country I wanted to be able to program my aid myself. I have an advantage over most since I have unilateral hearing loss I have one good ear to compare the programming to. Even then it's tricky because an aid is only and aid. It's not a cure. I cannot make a program to make my damaged ear be "normal". It's a balancing act between enough information to hear speech and information overload that turns into a muddy mush of unintelligible garbage.

The device that I purchased to program my aid was about $700. Finding the proprietary cables to connect my aid to the programmer was next to impossible. The manufactures of the hearing aids don't provide the cables to the public. They tightly control who is able to get them. They'll provide them for free to the dispensers (audiologist) in hopes that the audiologist will sell their product. Even though there are a number of hearing aid manufacturers, audiologists tend to favor one manufacturer over another.

There are a lot of parties involved in the final product and they all take their cut. I've seen a number of people make posts about insurance paying for the aids. Everyone I dealt with (a couple of ENT specialists and 3 audiologists) were all very surprised that my insurance provider (BCBS) provided any coverage at all. I'm not sure of the reasoning behind it but most providers offer no coverage for hearing aids.

On the surface it's a piece of plastic with some bits of wire and electronics in it. There's more to it to than that though.

I'll try and draw an analogy. I used to be a locksmith. I'd go somewhere and unlock someone's house or car. They'd see me do it (and make it look easy) and say "What the... I paid $50 for that?? I could have done that!!"

My response: "But you didn't"

(Actually I never said that but I always wanted to)

At the end of the day I think it simply comes down to... hearing aids cost as much as they do because consumers are willing to pay that much. What the market will bear.