(CBS News) – California and 17 other states don’t require private insurance plans to cover hearing aids for kids, so many don’t. But about two or three of every 1,000 babies in the U.S. are born with detectable hearing loss in one or both ears, according to the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders.

“You have to learn to hear before you can learn to speak, and we all speak how we hear,” said Brooke Phillips, a Los Angeles audiologist who co-chairs the volunteer coalition Let California Kids Hear. (Read More)