Exactly right. Requiring a recent prescription in order to purchase corrective lenses is a stupid, infuriating waste of time and money. Getting the lenses you need, and getting screening for eye diseases, are two separate issues, and they should be unlinked in state and federal law.
A similar issue is doctors who won't write a prescription for birth control pills except after a pelvic exam and pap smear. This is idiotic. Yes, those screenings are good--but it makes no sense at all to tell a woman that she has to accept a higher risk of unwanted pregnancy if for whatever reason she doesn't want screening for reproductive cancers. Fortunately, this isn't written into law, so doctors are free to depart from the standard practice, and I always did so when I was in clinical practice. I think oral contraceptives should be over-the-counter anyway, so I always gave a prescription to any woman who asked for one, independent of what else she might decide to do for her reproductive health. Two separate issues, so deal with them separately.
You can buy glasses on Zenni by just entering your prescription. I've been getting my progressives from them for years. Still using a prescription I got years ago from an optometrist in Germany, but increasing the near-vision addition according to my needs (and in consultation with my mother who is a retired ophthalmologist). They don't require proof of an up-to-date prescription.
I found Zenni glasses to be low quality, but they are cheap and you can reuse a prescription.
I prefer to buy my glasses when I travel. For example in Japan, there are many shops in train stations where you can walk in, take a test on a machine and have custom glasses in various styles in 30 minutes for less than $100. Some have online stores like owndays.com or zoff.com but I don’t think they ship internationally.
The US should also get rid of prescription requirements for many other things: birth control pills, pet medicines, wegovy and other GLP1 agonists, hearing aids, CPAP machines, and much more.
I have seen no difference between my Zenni glasses and the $900 progressives with Chanel frames I bought locally. In fact, the latter deteriorated very quickly. But I do always buy the more expensive frames and lenses from Zenni. Always make sure, for instance, that the frames have spring hinges.
I got a few pairs there, but on the low end. The size was too small compared to what the fitting app showed, they look like they were for a child, and the plastic lenses have starburst flare from headlights when driving at night. Maybe the expensive ones are good, but the ones I got were trash.
I always look very closely at the dimensions of the glasses on Zenni (they give all the details on every measurement), and compare them to the glasses I already own (even though I have found their virtual try-on tool pretty accurate, and it's gotten better). It does take some legwork to get the right fitting glasses there, and their chat customer service is pretty useless, but it's worth the enormous savings.
I'm pretty sure my kids buy contacts from Costco. They've got a great optical department. I'm not sure if you have to supply a written prescription or just tell them the parameters.
But point taken, there are tons of medical services which are way too expensive because the provider cartel (and I'm looking at you AMA) profits that way. It's Bootleggers and Baptists all around.
Zenni is such a god-sent. Everything around vision seems to be nothing but a racket and Zenni is the only proper disruptor.
Not sure if there is a Zenni-like solution for lenses though. Maybe a startup for someone. EDIT: Looks like ezcontacts.com and lensdirect.com sell contacts without prescription verification. <30s with ChatGPT and I indeed can add prescription lenses to the shopping cart at ezcontacts. Since I cannot use over-the counter contacts (b/c keratoconus) I didn't try the actual order all the way through.
Yes, and their progressives that I get for about $100 work just as well for me than the $900 progressives from our local optician that were my first pair! That was such a rip-off. I then thought Warby Parker was the solution (I got a good pair from them for $350), but now I only buy glasses at Zenni.
This is what I have been doing for a few years. Especially since I got a puppy a year and a half ago and rapidly went through a half-dozen pairs. Ordering a few at a time with a saved prescription was easy and convenient and being able to get them for $60-$70 a pair made it less of an absolute tragedy when my dog would inevitably get his mouth on them and chew through the frames again.
The amount of regulatory capture in this country is truly quite astounding. Whether it be eyeglasses requiring a prescription, hairdressing licenses requiring hundreds or even thousands of hours to obtain, or medical schools not accepting anywhere near as many candidates as we need, there exists a professional body fighting to protect its own interests. Yet, for whatever reason, this attracts almost 0 public attention. When corporations overstep their bounds, the Democrats criticize them. When unions overstep their bounds, the Republicans criticize them. But professional organizations? It seems that as far as our politics are concerned, they are merely collections of unbiased experts who only have the public's best interest at heart. While they undoubtedly do much work that is good and important, there is no denying that their primary responsibility is to represent the interests of their members. If those interests sometimes benefit the public, it is only because their interests and the public's happened to align.
I assume your reference to DOGE was a throw-away line.
You don't seriously believe the DOGE has anything to do with "Efficiency," rather than an unconstitutional effort to eliminate programs that team-Trump does not like without dealing with Congress, which authorized (and thereby required) that the programs be implemented.
Give it up. (And as I taught my Officer cadet class 15 years ago, Congress long ago relinquished it's authority to run wars or implement broad mandates long ago - they are, however, VERY good at steering money generated from those wars and mandates towards their districts (how quaint) or (increasingly) their national and international fundraisers.)
This racket has bothered me for years. A few months ago I couldn’t get more contacts because it had been just over 1 year since my last visit. Had to schedule an appt, take off work, pay for the appt, and then wait a few weeks to receive the contacts. Such an annoying hassle.
This is a very real and frustrating problem for Americans, but Musk and Trump arent trying to help anyone, sadly. Hurting people and lining their pockets with tax dollars is all we can expect.
To add insult to injury, optometrists aren't the best people to diagnose and treat serious eye-related issues: that would be ophthalmologists, who are actual doctors.
This is like saying you should be seeing an oral surgeon instead of a dentist. Optometry is a 4 year post-bachelors degree. Optometrists do retinal exams and glaucoma screening. They can prescribe eye medications. They co manage patients with ophthalmologists. Two different jobs.
That's not quite an accurate analogy. Ophthalmologists do routine exams and prescribe corrective lenses as well as more advanced procedures. It's quite possible to receive complete eye care from an ophthalmologist, whereas an oral surgeon doesn't typically clean your teeth or offer other routine dental exams and procedures.. After my optometrist missed a serious retinal problem for a decade, I switched to an ophthalmologist and have been well taken care of since. I agree with Yasha that it should be possible to buy glasses and lenses without a prescription, and also believe that occasional thorough eye exams, ideally by an ophthalmologist, are a good idea.
Hi, Tom. I’m sorry your eye condition was missed and hope you have had a good outcome. I’m a retired optometrist and have practiced in a variety of settings including a hospital based eye department. I have found most ophthalmologists to be skilled and dedicated. However. there are some of them who have poor skills. There are also some competent ophthalmologists who make errors due to the crush of patients they see. (Oh, the stories I could tell.) The same thing could be said of optometrists, dentists, podiatrists and nurse practitioners. You get my point. Anyway, to each their own. Just hope you get a competent provider regardless whichever letters come after his or her name.
You just had a bad optometrist. I have had a retinal exam and glaucoma screening at every appointment. Now you are being overcharged for routine eye care by seeing a more expensive specialist.
True about that optometrist! In general I'm a believer in care being provided by generalists unless a specialist is needed. For example, I think having more primary care delivered by nurse-practitioners and physician's assistants is a good trend. I also think the trend toward collection of individual data by such devices as smart watches and continuous glucose monitors and the screening of such data by AI apps is positive. I would not be surprised to see the development of smartphone apps for glaucoma screening and retinal exams within a decade or two. FWIW, I buy my glasses at Costco. In my specific case, I have enough lingering visual issues that regular visits to an ophthalmologist are a good investment in remaining fully sighted. I think optometrists are in the same economic category as audiologists, which is that the artifice of prescription requirements is forcing an over-supply of optometric services, and there will be a difficult adjustment if the prescription requirements are ended. From the 50,000-foot level, advances in medical technology have severely reduced the need for certain kinds of practices countless times. Consider what fluoridation of the water supply did to the demand for pediatric dentistry, for example, and try to imagine what the widespread adoption of GLP-1 agonists (Ozempic, etc) will do to dieticians, cardiologists and owners of Zumba franchises.
I am pretty sure Warby-Parker is designing an app to do a basic eye refraction. I don’t see how an app would do a glaucoma screen, because you’re actually applying pressure to the cornea. And I don’t see how an app would get an image of your retina in any detail. I could see those kinds of screeners being dumped on primary care providers.
Hearing aids have become much more technologically advanced. They are able to amplify specific frequencies and customize different hearing environments. They are much, much better than they used to be.
Hearing and vision impairments are both things that most people seem to think are normal, particularly with age, but no one seems to care much anymore.
That's true. I discovered by accident that I had glaucoma when my optometrist casually mentioned it in passing. I had to take the initiative to find an ophthalmologist (which wasn't hard) and begin an eye-drop regimen.
I had the same thought a couple of years ago when I needed glasses and brought in a prescription that might have been all of 2 months over the one year requirement in Massachusetts. my eyesight hadn't changed and even if it had if I am okay with the glasses I would get with that prescription why couldn't I get the glasses?
It's worth noting that uncorrected vision loss is a risk factor for dementia, so anything that puts people off getting glasses could have serious consequences.
In addition to needing an RX for glasses, no optometrist will take my old frames and put in a new set of lenses. They say I need to buy a new pair of frames, too.
I just had to go through this this past week. I went in to get new glasses thinking I had a couple months left on a two-year prescription (which has been my norm for ages) only to have the clerk tell me it was a one-year prescription that had expired already. Confused, I protested that my prescriptions were always two-year, and she replied that the doc can change that if they feel the need. Since I am now over 40, I assume that's what triggered it. The clerk said in her chipper way "but its covered by insurance so no biggie!" and all I could think was, "yeah, good for y'all, you get more revenue, and all it costs is wasting my time". I did the exam this week, and whaddya know...basically no change to my prescription. But now I have to get an exam every year in order to get glasses. Lasik is looking more and more worth it.
The whole mandatory eye exam in the US is such a boondoggle! I live in Switzerland, where you can get a comprehensive eye exam for about $25, or, if you just need replacement glasses, you can get them with no need for an expensive and unnecessary exam. Because we don’t need to submit to a stupid eye exam, eyeglasses are one of the few things that are cheaper in Switzerland than in the US (and thankfully, excellent local wine is another).
This is such a vital issue. And I mean vital. For a couple of years, our school health insurance did not cover eye exams and lenses. On top of that, recently I had pink eye, and had to pay $200 to get a damned prescription for a visible, irrefutable ailment. I wasted $200 seeing an ophthalmologist who kept arguing with me that nothing is wrong with my vision, which is intermittently blurry after exertion. I cracked a rib, went to an Urgent Care, paid over $100 for that, was ordered to see another doctor, paid over $100 to be told that actually, there was no fracture (there was). Add to this the time and energy involved in paying the wrong specialist to see you and getting nothing out of it.
In S. Korea, one can go to the pharmacy for most ailments that can be treated with medicine. There's a flat co-pay for everything else.
I had a wisdom tooth pulled there for $15.00. In NYC, getting the second wisdom tooth pulled was billed at 2 grand.
Exactly right. Requiring a recent prescription in order to purchase corrective lenses is a stupid, infuriating waste of time and money. Getting the lenses you need, and getting screening for eye diseases, are two separate issues, and they should be unlinked in state and federal law.
A similar issue is doctors who won't write a prescription for birth control pills except after a pelvic exam and pap smear. This is idiotic. Yes, those screenings are good--but it makes no sense at all to tell a woman that she has to accept a higher risk of unwanted pregnancy if for whatever reason she doesn't want screening for reproductive cancers. Fortunately, this isn't written into law, so doctors are free to depart from the standard practice, and I always did so when I was in clinical practice. I think oral contraceptives should be over-the-counter anyway, so I always gave a prescription to any woman who asked for one, independent of what else she might decide to do for her reproductive health. Two separate issues, so deal with them separately.
You can buy glasses on Zenni by just entering your prescription. I've been getting my progressives from them for years. Still using a prescription I got years ago from an optometrist in Germany, but increasing the near-vision addition according to my needs (and in consultation with my mother who is a retired ophthalmologist). They don't require proof of an up-to-date prescription.
I found Zenni glasses to be low quality, but they are cheap and you can reuse a prescription.
I prefer to buy my glasses when I travel. For example in Japan, there are many shops in train stations where you can walk in, take a test on a machine and have custom glasses in various styles in 30 minutes for less than $100. Some have online stores like owndays.com or zoff.com but I don’t think they ship internationally.
The US should also get rid of prescription requirements for many other things: birth control pills, pet medicines, wegovy and other GLP1 agonists, hearing aids, CPAP machines, and much more.
I have seen no difference between my Zenni glasses and the $900 progressives with Chanel frames I bought locally. In fact, the latter deteriorated very quickly. But I do always buy the more expensive frames and lenses from Zenni. Always make sure, for instance, that the frames have spring hinges.
I got a few pairs there, but on the low end. The size was too small compared to what the fitting app showed, they look like they were for a child, and the plastic lenses have starburst flare from headlights when driving at night. Maybe the expensive ones are good, but the ones I got were trash.
I always look very closely at the dimensions of the glasses on Zenni (they give all the details on every measurement), and compare them to the glasses I already own (even though I have found their virtual try-on tool pretty accurate, and it's gotten better). It does take some legwork to get the right fitting glasses there, and their chat customer service is pretty useless, but it's worth the enormous savings.
I'm pretty sure my kids buy contacts from Costco. They've got a great optical department. I'm not sure if you have to supply a written prescription or just tell them the parameters.
But point taken, there are tons of medical services which are way too expensive because the provider cartel (and I'm looking at you AMA) profits that way. It's Bootleggers and Baptists all around.
Zenni is such a god-sent. Everything around vision seems to be nothing but a racket and Zenni is the only proper disruptor.
Not sure if there is a Zenni-like solution for lenses though. Maybe a startup for someone. EDIT: Looks like ezcontacts.com and lensdirect.com sell contacts without prescription verification. <30s with ChatGPT and I indeed can add prescription lenses to the shopping cart at ezcontacts. Since I cannot use over-the counter contacts (b/c keratoconus) I didn't try the actual order all the way through.
Yes, and their progressives that I get for about $100 work just as well for me than the $900 progressives from our local optician that were my first pair! That was such a rip-off. I then thought Warby Parker was the solution (I got a good pair from them for $350), but now I only buy glasses at Zenni.
This is what I have been doing for a few years. Especially since I got a puppy a year and a half ago and rapidly went through a half-dozen pairs. Ordering a few at a time with a saved prescription was easy and convenient and being able to get them for $60-$70 a pair made it less of an absolute tragedy when my dog would inevitably get his mouth on them and chew through the frames again.
The amount of regulatory capture in this country is truly quite astounding. Whether it be eyeglasses requiring a prescription, hairdressing licenses requiring hundreds or even thousands of hours to obtain, or medical schools not accepting anywhere near as many candidates as we need, there exists a professional body fighting to protect its own interests. Yet, for whatever reason, this attracts almost 0 public attention. When corporations overstep their bounds, the Democrats criticize them. When unions overstep their bounds, the Republicans criticize them. But professional organizations? It seems that as far as our politics are concerned, they are merely collections of unbiased experts who only have the public's best interest at heart. While they undoubtedly do much work that is good and important, there is no denying that their primary responsibility is to represent the interests of their members. If those interests sometimes benefit the public, it is only because their interests and the public's happened to align.
I assume your reference to DOGE was a throw-away line.
You don't seriously believe the DOGE has anything to do with "Efficiency," rather than an unconstitutional effort to eliminate programs that team-Trump does not like without dealing with Congress, which authorized (and thereby required) that the programs be implemented.
Give it up. (And as I taught my Officer cadet class 15 years ago, Congress long ago relinquished it's authority to run wars or implement broad mandates long ago - they are, however, VERY good at steering money generated from those wars and mandates towards their districts (how quaint) or (increasingly) their national and international fundraisers.)
🥱💤
Prove it.
You're sweet
This racket has bothered me for years. A few months ago I couldn’t get more contacts because it had been just over 1 year since my last visit. Had to schedule an appt, take off work, pay for the appt, and then wait a few weeks to receive the contacts. Such an annoying hassle.
This is a very real and frustrating problem for Americans, but Musk and Trump arent trying to help anyone, sadly. Hurting people and lining their pockets with tax dollars is all we can expect.
To add insult to injury, optometrists aren't the best people to diagnose and treat serious eye-related issues: that would be ophthalmologists, who are actual doctors.
This is like saying you should be seeing an oral surgeon instead of a dentist. Optometry is a 4 year post-bachelors degree. Optometrists do retinal exams and glaucoma screening. They can prescribe eye medications. They co manage patients with ophthalmologists. Two different jobs.
That's not quite an accurate analogy. Ophthalmologists do routine exams and prescribe corrective lenses as well as more advanced procedures. It's quite possible to receive complete eye care from an ophthalmologist, whereas an oral surgeon doesn't typically clean your teeth or offer other routine dental exams and procedures.. After my optometrist missed a serious retinal problem for a decade, I switched to an ophthalmologist and have been well taken care of since. I agree with Yasha that it should be possible to buy glasses and lenses without a prescription, and also believe that occasional thorough eye exams, ideally by an ophthalmologist, are a good idea.
Hi, Tom. I’m sorry your eye condition was missed and hope you have had a good outcome. I’m a retired optometrist and have practiced in a variety of settings including a hospital based eye department. I have found most ophthalmologists to be skilled and dedicated. However. there are some of them who have poor skills. There are also some competent ophthalmologists who make errors due to the crush of patients they see. (Oh, the stories I could tell.) The same thing could be said of optometrists, dentists, podiatrists and nurse practitioners. You get my point. Anyway, to each their own. Just hope you get a competent provider regardless whichever letters come after his or her name.
You just had a bad optometrist. I have had a retinal exam and glaucoma screening at every appointment. Now you are being overcharged for routine eye care by seeing a more expensive specialist.
True about that optometrist! In general I'm a believer in care being provided by generalists unless a specialist is needed. For example, I think having more primary care delivered by nurse-practitioners and physician's assistants is a good trend. I also think the trend toward collection of individual data by such devices as smart watches and continuous glucose monitors and the screening of such data by AI apps is positive. I would not be surprised to see the development of smartphone apps for glaucoma screening and retinal exams within a decade or two. FWIW, I buy my glasses at Costco. In my specific case, I have enough lingering visual issues that regular visits to an ophthalmologist are a good investment in remaining fully sighted. I think optometrists are in the same economic category as audiologists, which is that the artifice of prescription requirements is forcing an over-supply of optometric services, and there will be a difficult adjustment if the prescription requirements are ended. From the 50,000-foot level, advances in medical technology have severely reduced the need for certain kinds of practices countless times. Consider what fluoridation of the water supply did to the demand for pediatric dentistry, for example, and try to imagine what the widespread adoption of GLP-1 agonists (Ozempic, etc) will do to dieticians, cardiologists and owners of Zumba franchises.
I am pretty sure Warby-Parker is designing an app to do a basic eye refraction. I don’t see how an app would do a glaucoma screen, because you’re actually applying pressure to the cornea. And I don’t see how an app would get an image of your retina in any detail. I could see those kinds of screeners being dumped on primary care providers.
Hearing aids have become much more technologically advanced. They are able to amplify specific frequencies and customize different hearing environments. They are much, much better than they used to be.
Hearing and vision impairments are both things that most people seem to think are normal, particularly with age, but no one seems to care much anymore.
That's true. I discovered by accident that I had glaucoma when my optometrist casually mentioned it in passing. I had to take the initiative to find an ophthalmologist (which wasn't hard) and begin an eye-drop regimen.
Totally get this. I'm currently putting off getting a refill of contacts because of the needless hassle!
I had the same thought a couple of years ago when I needed glasses and brought in a prescription that might have been all of 2 months over the one year requirement in Massachusetts. my eyesight hadn't changed and even if it had if I am okay with the glasses I would get with that prescription why couldn't I get the glasses?
Thank you for this! It is incredibly frustrating and the system absolutely needs “correction”!
Vision prescription is not the system that needs correction. That would be health insurance and our system that rewards sociopaths.
Elon is a Bond world dominating villain intent on destroying government so he can empty our Treasury into his pockets.
It's worth noting that uncorrected vision loss is a risk factor for dementia, so anything that puts people off getting glasses could have serious consequences.
Now you want optometrists to diagnose dementia?
I can't tell if this is supposed to be a joke comment? That's very much not what I said.
In addition to needing an RX for glasses, no optometrist will take my old frames and put in a new set of lenses. They say I need to buy a new pair of frames, too.
I just did that. Lenses were under warranty too.
I just had to go through this this past week. I went in to get new glasses thinking I had a couple months left on a two-year prescription (which has been my norm for ages) only to have the clerk tell me it was a one-year prescription that had expired already. Confused, I protested that my prescriptions were always two-year, and she replied that the doc can change that if they feel the need. Since I am now over 40, I assume that's what triggered it. The clerk said in her chipper way "but its covered by insurance so no biggie!" and all I could think was, "yeah, good for y'all, you get more revenue, and all it costs is wasting my time". I did the exam this week, and whaddya know...basically no change to my prescription. But now I have to get an exam every year in order to get glasses. Lasik is looking more and more worth it.
The whole mandatory eye exam in the US is such a boondoggle! I live in Switzerland, where you can get a comprehensive eye exam for about $25, or, if you just need replacement glasses, you can get them with no need for an expensive and unnecessary exam. Because we don’t need to submit to a stupid eye exam, eyeglasses are one of the few things that are cheaper in Switzerland than in the US (and thankfully, excellent local wine is another).
What on earth. This sounds immensely silly. I had no idea how privileged we are about this in the rest of the world.
This is such a vital issue. And I mean vital. For a couple of years, our school health insurance did not cover eye exams and lenses. On top of that, recently I had pink eye, and had to pay $200 to get a damned prescription for a visible, irrefutable ailment. I wasted $200 seeing an ophthalmologist who kept arguing with me that nothing is wrong with my vision, which is intermittently blurry after exertion. I cracked a rib, went to an Urgent Care, paid over $100 for that, was ordered to see another doctor, paid over $100 to be told that actually, there was no fracture (there was). Add to this the time and energy involved in paying the wrong specialist to see you and getting nothing out of it.
In S. Korea, one can go to the pharmacy for most ailments that can be treated with medicine. There's a flat co-pay for everything else.
I had a wisdom tooth pulled there for $15.00. In NYC, getting the second wisdom tooth pulled was billed at 2 grand.