Hearing loss and healthcare expenditures in the United States: evidence of a public health market failure
Yuval Arbel, Yifat Arbel, Netanel Kerner, Oriya Kerner · 2026
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Description
Yuval Arbel and co-authors argued in 2026 that hearing loss in the United States shows a public health market failure. About 48 million American adults live with hearing loss, yet only a minority who could benefit from hearing aids use them. The team combined a game-theory model of adoption choices with national survey data on health spending.
People reporting hearing difficulty used more care and cost more across major service types, and model-based estimates put the spending gap tied to hearing loss as substantial. The dataset could not separate treated from untreated loss, so the savings from wider aid use could not be directly measured. The model frames low adoption as a social dilemma: private costs loom larger than private gains, while society pays the wider bill.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Yuval Arbel, Yifat Arbel, Netanel Kerner, Oriya Kerner |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 46 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | CC BY 4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |