Hi Jason -
I was very lucky to have great health insurance at the time I had my surgery. I can't imagine looking at the bill for this surgery otherwise, so after reading your post, I thought there must be something out there for patients that don't have insurance (grants, hearing assoc, etc) that would help in a situation such as this. I barely started searching last night and today I called the House Ear Clinic. I spoke with Chris, patient counselor, and she stated that she didn't know of any, but that if you don't have ins, the docs and hospital reduce the cost of your surgery to $39K - $44K. That is still a huge amount, but it was much more for mine with ins. Its a start and maybe there are churches or other groups that will participate as well? I will continue to look into. If you do not want to go there, maybe your place of choice might offer the same?
It seems to me that the AN Assoc would be able to help locating such services or even offer something. If not, seems like something that ANers would contribute to for patients such as yourself. Does anyone else know of a fund? So many people do not have ins these days and that is scary when this sort of need arises.
Best,
Sherry