Hearing Aids Repair: Who Pays and What the Warranty Says

What Medicaid paid per repair line under V5014

Medicaid claims are the only national dollar figures we found for hearing aid repair. Providers bill a repair under HCPCS code V5014, which the CMS code file labels "Repair/modification of a hearing aid." Across 2023-2024, Medicaid paid $2,044,099.86 on 27,816 claim lines under that code, or $73.49 per line.

The gap between billers is wide. Among the 100 billing providers with unmasked data, a tenth average $18.52 or less per line, the median biller averages $41.09, and a tenth average $297.66 or more. The largest single biller accounts for 11.4% of paid dollars, so no one provider sets the national figure.

Read these as one program's payments, not shop prices. A claim line doesn't say how many items or how much work it covers, managed care encounters can carry nominal amounts, small cells are masked at source, and 2024 data are preliminary. Nor are they what a Medicaid member pays. The spread between billers is our own calculation from the national file, not a CMS statistic. Whether your state's Medicaid program covers hearing aids for adults at all is a separate question; our Medicaid page lists state rules.

VA: repairs at no charge, requested on VA Form 1107

For veterans who get hearing aids through the VA, the cost question has a short answer. The VA prosthetics page says that once hearing aids are recommended and fit, "the hearing aids, repairs, and future batteries will all be at no charge to you, as long as you maintain VA eligibility for care."

Repairs go through a form. VA.gov asks for a Request for Repairs and/or Accessories (VA Form 1107), mailed to the VA Denver Logistics Center together with the hearing aid and its related parts. When you only need replacement parts such as tubing or cords, you keep the aid; the VA Audiology and Speech Pathology Service that issued it can help with that request.

These rules apply to aids the VA provided. Our VA hearing aids page explains who can get them, and how often the VA replaces hearing aids covers the replacement side.

Four makers' warranties, document by document

A warranty is a contract with the maker or the seller, and it belongs to one document, one product line and one market. We read four in the makers' own files. None of them is a promise that covers every hearing aid sold in the United States.

• Phonak: the U.S. edition of the Audéo I-R user guide prints Sonova AG's "one year limited international warranty, valid from the date of purchase," for manufacturing and material defects in the hearing aid and charger, once a proof of purchase is shown. Tubes, earpieces and external receivers are left out, as are damage from improper handling or care, chemicals or undue stress, and any service the hearing care professional performs in the office; work by a non-authorized service center voids it. The guide sends you to the professional who sold the aids for the local warranty terms.
• Unitron: the English user guide for the Insera S, which carries U.S., Canadian and Australian regulatory notices, prints the same Sonova AG one-year international warranty, here leaving out accessories such as batteries, with the same referral to the local warranty.
• Oticon: the UK edition of the instructions for the Opn miniRITE gives an international limited warranty of 12 months from the date of delivery. Accessories such as batteries, tubing, speakers, earpieces and filters are excluded, and so are accidents, excessive use and repairs by an unauthorised party. It is a British booklet for one product family, not a U.S. promise for current Oticon aids, and it adds that the hearing care professional may have issued a warranty that goes further.
• ReSound: the international help page says ReSound aids "come with 1-4 years of warranty coverage depending on the model." That is a range across models, not the term of any one aid: the warranty card or contract from the seller gives the period for yours.

None of the warranty passages we read promises cover for a lost aid or for accidental breakage, and we don't assume any. The Phonak, Unitron and Oticon texts add that the warranty doesn't affect legal rights under national consumer-sales law. When an aid fails inside the period, the card or contract you got at purchase decides what's covered. Our pages on Phonak and Oticon hearing aids cover those two brands in more detail.

Medicare, and why there's no shop price here

Original Medicare isn't a payer for the aid itself: Medicare.gov says it "doesn't cover hearing aids or exams for fitting hearing aids," and that you pay all costs for non-covered services. The same page notes that some Medicare Advantage plans offer extra benefits Original Medicare doesn't cover. Whether a plan's hearing benefit pays for repairs sits in that plan's Evidence of Coverage, which we didn't read for this page; our Medicare Advantage page sets out hearing aid caps by state.

We don't publish a retail repair price. No source we read prints one that holds beyond a single clinic, and the Medicaid amounts above are what one payer paid, not what a shop charges. A written repair quote from the clinic or the maker is the figure to set against your warranty card and against the cost of new aids, which our hearing aid cost page and our page on how long hearing aids last cover.