Topic #7 – Making Me Have A Prescription For Eyeware

I’m sure it’s a billion-dollar industry.  Everything that has to do with doctors is.  Whether you’re a foot doctor, butt doctor or eye doctor, I’m sure you’re a billion-dollar industry.  However, I land on eyecare like I do pretty much all things that require a prescription, but really, even more so on eyecare.  When it comes to drugs, I at least understand why some argue that drug use would go up if you didn’t need a prescription (even though I wouldn’t eat oxycontin if you were handing it out in Luke Skywalker shaped pez dispensers).  But a prescription for glasses and contact lenses?  Are they afraid of people just unnecessarily ordering up massive amounts of bifocals and gas permeables for no good reason?  It’s not like buying a pair of -3.5 Bausch & Lomb’s is going to make you despondent and abusive. 

My eyes have been at about the same strength, give or take .25 on the “whatever-the-hell-you-call-that-scary-contraption” they have you press your face against in their darkened room for about 10 years.  Even that is subjective.  “1 or 2”?  They haven’t looked different since 1995, Doc.  I memorized the 4th line down on the eye chart when I was 19.  It hasn’t changed since.  What’s the point?  If I want to jab -3.75 into my left and -4.00 into my right eye when I should have  -4.00 and -4.25, who the hell is that hurting?  Absolutely no one.  No one wants to not be able to see.  If my vision has changed enough that I can’t see street signs and such, I’ll want to get checked out.  Contact lenses and glasses are expensive enough.  A cheap frame – just the frame – for glasses is $100…and thats if you want to look like Raj from What’s Happening.  The original, not What’s Happening Now when they updated his look to the oh-so-sheik 80’s black frames.  Then you add on lenses, etc., AND you want to charge me $100+ just to tell me that my eyes are in the same shape as they were last year?   If I don’t know how my eyes are doing and I want to pay to get them checked, that’s fine, but I don’t need a yearly exam to tell me what I already know.  If you think I do, YOU AM DUMB.