Showing posts with label hearing aids. Show all posts
Showing posts with label hearing aids. Show all posts

Sunday, August 1, 2010

Sample Letter to Congressperson re: Hearing Aid Tax Credit

If you saw my review of Plantronics recent shareholder meeting, you noticed that Congress is considering a hearing aid tax credit. Unfortunately, the House bill doesn't cover most hearing-impaired working adults. In contrast, Senator Harkin's version of the bill--S. 1019--covers all hearing-impaired persons. If you would like to write your Congressperson and support Senator Harkin's bill, I have included a sample letter below. Just fill in the name of your House Representative, your own name at the bottom, and paste it in an email to your Rep. Your House Representative can be located here.

Dear Honorable NAME OF REPRESENTATIVE:

I am a long-time resident of your congressional district. I am writing you regarding HR 1646 (The Hearing Aid Tax Credit bill.)

I understand you are a co-sponsor of this bill. Unfortunately, this bill limits the tax credit to hearing impaired people who are 55 and older and dependents. The bill completely ignores working people who are under the age of 55.

Without well-functioning hearing aids, hearing-impaired workers will not have full access to the workplace. Thus, they will be unable to compete with other workers.

Expanding the tax credit to all ages will ensure that hearing-impaired workers will be able to compete in the workplace. Accordingly, I ask you to support an amendment to this bill which was ensure that credit would be extended to all regarding of age.

This amendment would be similar to the S. 1019, which covers all ages.

In closing, thank you for your time and consideration.

Sincerely,

YOUR NAME

Monday, January 5, 2009

Letter to Miss Manners

It's blast-to-the-past time again. I found another letter I wrote, this time to Miss Manners. She doesn't list the names of people who send in questions, but this one's mine:

SJ Mercury News, November 13, 1999:

Dear Miss Manners:

I am a young adult who is hearing-impaired and consequently wears a hearing aid. I am often approached by curious children of friends and strangers who ask what is in my ear. The "glasses for ears" analogy is getting old, and I wonder if the 4-9 year-old children understand what I'm talking about anyway. Do you have any suggestions as to what I can do when approached by these young people? I have not been able to come up with an answer that successfully satisfies their curiosity and also dissuades them from attempting to touch my ears.

Gentle Reader:

"It's to turn up the volume." If it weren't for the satisfaction of answering your question, Miss Manners would regret that no child will fail to understand this. Your next problem will be what to say when those children ask where they can get these for themselves.

To this day, Miss Manners' advice works for me. It's stunning how she was able to come up with the perfect answer.