It seems like it doesn’t take much skill to determine the right glasses for someone - which is better, one or two? Why can’t machines do this? Say, you sit down in a booth in the mall, have a little toggle switch for which of the lens choices is best, and get a slip to take to your local 1-hour-glasses shop with the results.
You could go to a podiatrist, who could take careful measures of your foot, arches, toe thickness - whatever - or just use that simple sliding tool found in every shoe store. Unless they’ve got serious foot problems, most people are able to fit themselves for shoes.
Some people I’ve spoken to regarding this issue say, “Sure, but the optometrist is trained to look for other vision problems as well as prescribing glasses.” That’s true, and a podiatrist could spot some skin cancer on your ankle, but you don’t have to see him to get new shoes.
They’ve also said that having the wrong glasses can be dangerous. Wearing the wrong shoes can pinch nerves, throw off your stride, make you stumble - pretty much what you’d expect from someone who couldn’t see too well either.
You assume that all vision problems are cut and dried so you can figure them out with relative ease. I’m nearsighted, but not much and I just need the glasses for driving and night.
But what if I had an astigmatism? What if I need different glasses for reading?
Also is your little machine in the mall going to perform a glacoma test on me? Or see if I have cataracts developing?
I’m a copyeditor, and if I had a nickel for every person who’s said to me about my job, “Can’t they just use a spell checker?” I’d be a rich woman. At least I’d be rich and insulted instead of just insulted.
My particular prescription is not available in 1-hour specs shops. I assume that this is because it’s more complex than what could be determined by a machine at the mall. This is why I go to a doctor, a highly trained expert human being. My vision is not something I want to trust to a Lens-O-Matic.
I have always thought that it was part of the professional monopoly conspiracy in the US. You have to go through some sort of professional gatekeeper for many services – pharmacist, lawyer, optometrist, undertaker, *&%#%# doctors, etc.
The state sees the individual as inherently stupid and has to be protected.
If you take a walk through that mall, you’ll probably find one or more shops that sell basic magnifying glasses for people who are a little farsighted, and need help reading.
But I have never, ever seen any basic, non-prescription glasses for those of us who are nearsighted. Therefore, I have to infer that it’s harder to work up a usable pair of glasses for nearsightedness.
My last eye exam, a couple of months ago, took more than 40 of those little clicks for each eye to come up with the proper lens – starting from my previous prescription, not from scratch. And, like Scarlett my prescription is not available from a 1-hour lens shop.
The obvious answer to your question is, “it’s harder than you think it is.”
Good question, and so far no answers - just guesses.
I’m a little tin-foil-hattish about the whole thing myself. My guess is that the optomitrists, opthamologists, optawhatevers have a powerful ongoing lobbing effort. Every time I get a new pair of glasses I feel like I’ve been ripped off by a used car salesman. I’m mildly nearsighted and over 40 which means bifocals. The last time cost me nearly $800 dollars for one pair of regular glasses and one pair of prescription dark glasses. And that doesn’t even include the eye exam which at $75 was a bargain. After I’d committed to the deal I realized I could have gotten Lasik surgery for that price.
How can they possibly justify charging $200 and more for frames. FRAMES! No lens at all, just frames.
When I was trying to decide whether or not to get bifocals on the dark glasses I asked how much extra that would be and they said $40, but the bill showed $80. Why the difference, I asked. Well, they explained, that’s because it’s $40 per lens. Right, I guess they have to price it that way for all those one-eyed customers.
When I was twelve, it was discovered that I was nearsighted in one eye, farsighted in the other, and had astigmatism in both, as well as a slight touch of whatever it’s called that produces walleyedness when it’s extreme. No look-into-the-binocular-thingie one-or-two test works to handle that combination of problems. (BTW, I’m mildly nearsighted now, and whatever was causing the astigmatism, 44 years of correction have eliminated it – I show no astigmatism today.)
I took my daughter to get glasses, because I noticed she had problems seeing me nod my head yes or shake my head no to a question when she was standing across the room.
The mall opthamologist said, “Hmmmm…” and referred my daughter to a pediatric opthamologist. Turns out my daughter had lazy eye. She did not have a wandering eye, but one eye was more far-sighted than the other.
She went for monthly checkups for about two years, and although her vision in her bad eye is much improved, she will need glasses for the rest of her life.
Some eye conditions cannot be diagnosed or treated with a machine. Those blood-pressure cuff machines you see in the pharmacy are not meant to replace doctors.
On another note, a friend of my father’s went to get glasses, and while the doctor was peering deep into his eye socket, told him to get to his physician immediately.
Turns out the opthamologist had seen a mass and it turned out to be a brain tumour.
We’re talking about an incredibly complex and delicate organ, and you want to trust treatment and diagnosis to a machine?
They charge $200 or more for a particular kind of frame because they can get it – people are willing to pay that for it. I’ve always bought fairly cheap frames that work well on my face; I’m not attempting to seduce someone with my dashing appearance in eyeglasses, after all!
As for the last, while a $40 per lens charge should have been made clear up front, I had a broken tinted lens in 2000 and had to replace it – the prescription was fairly new, and the other lens was fine; all they had to do was re-grind the one lens. Good example of where a per-lens charge is appropriate.
I don’t know for sure, but I would guess that a routine checkup by your family doctor would detect such a problem.
Either way, if your vision is so much more important than other aspects of your health, then why don’t we require folks who never need glasses to have their eyes checked on a regular basis. Some people have perfect vision all their lives other than the inevitable middle aged presbyopia which they solve by getting off the shelf reading glasses at Wal-Mart, therefore they never see an ophthalmologist.
**Polycarp’s ** condition obviously required a specialist, but mine doesn’t. Why can’t I make my own decision about whether or not I see a specialist?
I think there’s a good analogy between this and yeast infections (bear with me a second here). For years women who had yeast infections were required to go to a doctor to get a prescription for it, even after they had learned the symptoms well enough to know exactly what the problem was. Women got tired of suffering with their symptoms while they waited for the doctor to tell them what they already knew. One of the arguments for not allowing an over the counter treatment was that there might be some other problem down there. Women - and their men who suffered along with them in our own way - finally demanded that they be given control of their own health, and the restrictions were relaxed. Or so I understand - this is not my area of expertise.
There’s also an analogy to be made between required eye exams to get glasses and required colonoscopies to get hemorrhoid medicine. Don’t make me go there.
Anyway, back to yeast infections, I think the same argument applies to eye exams. I want to be able to choose whether or not I see a specialist.
You Americans might get ripped off by optometrists, but in Australia, lots of optometrists “bulk-bill” (money from the public health system goes towards the consultation), and some stores have “2 for the price of 1” specials (with some conditions I guess). Also, my private health insurance gives me about $100/year to go towards glasses.
You might as well ask “why prescriptions for antibiotics? I know if I’m sick and can use them myself.”
An optometrist is going to give a much more accurate prescription than if you try to figure it out yourself. It matters less if you are just a little bit nearsighted, but even then, many people don’t have the same prescription in each eye. How do you test yourself?
Then when you add in things like astygmatism (which you probably won’t realize if you have) and bi- and trifocals, it’s not something that the untrained person is going to be able to diagnose correctly.
Not that this hasn’t already been answered, but having a machine do something doesn’t mean you’ll get the same quality a human doctor with actual experience will give you. I’ve seen my prescriptions for glasses; I don’t know what the hell they mean. I don’t trust myself to get results as good as a professional. It’s not because I’m a moron, it’s because I’m smart enough to know what I don’t know.
It seems to me that wearing uncomfortable shoes is less likely to cause a car crash.
The way I read the OP, they would basically computerize the machine that generates the prescription. The one where the optometrist flips between two settings and asks you which one is better – I don’t know what it’s called. That whole procedure seems like it would be simple to automate and just as accurate as long as the person could still give feedback.
Why don’t they do this? I think because 1-hour eye places still need the eye doctor anyways, and it’s really not too much work for them or expense for you to just do the prescription part of the exam. So no incentive to create this new automated device.
Bad analogy. There are serious side effects to most antibiotics. Antibiotics are designed to target specific bacteria and areas of infection. Inappropriate use of antibiotics can lead to death, more resistent bacteria, and spreading of diseases. On the other hand, bad glasses just don’t let you see that well, and may give you headaches.
I think we all recognize the benefits of a professionally done eye exam, the question is why it is required.
Yeah … but just for getting glasses, if you’re smart enough to know what you need, you don’t have to get a prescription from an optometrist, you can just tell the optician what you want (diopters, axis, etc.) and they’ll make it for you.
I had the same thing happen to me. My family doctor treated me for a sinus infection for a long time until he sent me to the eye doctor, who immediately sent me to the hospital. Seems eye doctors have a keener sense about what’s supposed to be there and what’s not when you look into someone’s eyes.
Regarding the OP: If it were so easy, wouldn’t the doctor have his/her assistants do most of the work and then fly by to make sure everything’s “officially” ok?
When i go to the dentist, I get 99% of the work done by the techs and a quick hello from the doctor. Only if I have a cavity or need major work done do I see the dentist himself.
When I go to the optometrist, the techs run a battery of checkup-type tests then send me to the doctor himself for the vision test part. Seems that if the doctor’s part were “that easy” the techs would do everything like in a dentist’s office.