Hi HLAA Advocacy,

HLAA supports Ally's Act, H.R. 477. HLAA Boulder is close to the bill author, who lives in Broomfield, CO. We have also met Ally, the little girl who the bill has been named for. Ally wears a BAHA. We have been delivering news fresh from the source. We have posted Action Alerts for several months now. We are in the final days of August when the original lead co-sponsor, Congressman McKinley, will leave office because he lost the midterm elections.

Congressman McKinley is the only congressman wearing a cochlear implant and we feel he is the best person to rally the bill to a hearing before he leaves office. In addition, his grandson wears a BAHA and would benefit from this bill. The bill covers people from birth to age 64 and does not discriminate against people who need these devices. It doesn't matter whether the person was born with hearing loss or how they acquired it at any time during their life to age 64.

While some private insurers cover these Cochlear Implants (CI) and Bone Anchored Hearing Aids (BAHAs) (the processors, surgery, appointments, accessories, etc…), many others continue to deny coverage for these hearing devices. Even though these hearing devices are expensive, we are only talking about the hundreds of thousands of people who are left out and often overlooked by their private insurers. This bill is NOT an expensive bill – we are not talking about the 48 million people who require traditional hearing aids. About 350,000 wear a CI or BAHA in America.

If you haven't read about Ally's Act in our e-News, we would like to see a last-minute effort to flood Congressman McKinley's office to show support for him to rally for a hearing for Ally's Act before he leaves office.

If you have a moment, please call Congressman McKinley's office at 202-225-4172 or email his assistant Jeannine.Bender@... to ask him to lead and support H.R. 477 to get a hearing.

If you have more time, please write and ask these congresspeople to co-sponsor Ally's Act:

• Congressman Morgan Griffith (R-VA), 
• Congressman (Dr.) Greg Murphy (R-NC)
• Congresswoman Carol Miller (R-W.VA) 
  
  

For full details, please read the featured article at the top of our Boulder Chapter August 2022 e-News.

Thank you!