Hearing aid funding in Canada, province by province

What is covered, and what is not?

The single most useful thing to understand before you start is that hearing care in Canada is funded in two distinct pieces. The diagnostic hearing assessment — the appointment that produces your audiogram — is a medically insured service, and every province and territory covers it under its health plan when it is referred appropriately, though the referral rules and the age groups covered differ. The hearing aids themselves are treated as assistive devices rather than insured medical care, so they fall outside that coverage entirely and into a patchwork of provincial device programs, federal benefit plans, workers’ compensation, private insurance and tax credits. This is why someone can pay nothing for the test and several thousand dollars for the devices prescribed at it.

What does your province cover?

Select your province or territory for what its health plan covers on the assessment side, what device funding exists, and where to go next.

Provinces marked “details pending” deliberately show no dollar figures until the program has been researched and sourced.

What other funding routes exist?

Provincial programs are only one of several routes, and the others are frequently missed because they are administered by organisations that have nothing to do with your provincial health plan. It is worth checking all of them before assuming you are paying full price — and worth asking the clinic, because staff who handle these applications weekly usually know which route applies to you faster than you will.

What will you actually pay?

Funding is applied in a sequence rather than all at once, which is what makes the final figure hard to picture. A provincial program pays its share first, private insurance is then billed for part of the remainder, and the tax credit applies at year end to whatever you paid yourself. Put your own numbers in below to see how the layers stack up.

The default price per ear is a placeholder pending alignment with our hearing aid prices guide.

How do you apply?

Almost every route runs through the clinic rather than around it, which simplifies things considerably: the dispensing professional completes the clinical portion of the application, and in many cases submits it and bills the program directly so you never handle the money. Your part is establishing eligibility and getting the order of operations right.

1. See a physician first if funding matters. A referral is generally what makes the diagnostic assessment claimable under provincial health insurance, and several device programs require a referral or a medical form before they will consider an application.
2. Have the diagnostic assessment. The audiogram is the evidence every funding program is built on, and most set a threshold your results must meet.
3. Ask the clinic which programs you qualify for before choosing a device. Some programs fund only from an approved product list, or cap what they will pay per ear, which affects which devices make sense.
4. Get pre-approval where required. This is the step that most often costs people money — several plans and programs will not reimburse a device purchased before approval was granted.
5. Keep every receipt. You will need them for the insurance claim and for the medical expense tax credit, which is calculated on what you personally paid.

Related guides

Common questions

This guide is general information about funding programs, not financial, tax or medical advice. Program rules, dollar limits and eligibility change without notice — confirm the current position with the program administrator, your insurer or your clinic before making a purchase.