Driving is a privledge, not a right. (Read the Constitution again; Life, Liberty, and The Persuit of Happines.)
Driving priviledges are licensed by the state.
A comprehensive eye exam includes the use of a sophisticated machine to check you vision for several factors of a physical nature. It takes an MD to examine for medical factors and treat things like disease, infection, deterioration, etc. Both optometricist and the MD fine tune the readings of the machine. I know of a case where the indivdual was advised after the exam the all he needed was a cheap pair of reading glasses for Sprawl-Mart.
So have a comprehensive exam first time around, then use the mall machine if there are no complicating vision problems
Where the heck does the constitution fit into this? Please quote me the section of the constitution that talks about the rights and responsibilities of operating an automobile.
Yes, it’s not even a federal issue.
Most importantly, driving IS a right. There are causes for revocation of this right, just like any other. Your life, your liberty and your pursuit of happiness can all be taken away if you’re a bad boy. And so can your driver’s license. But if you behave, you have the right – that’s right, the right – to all of them: life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness and cruising the highway in your convertible.
This is completely irrelevant. Please quote me the section of the driving code (pick a state; any state) where it says you must have “a comprehensive eye exam” in order to drive. Can’t find it? That’s likely because it isn’t there. However, you will find something saying you must be able to see properly. And for the average person that does not require an eye surgeon who went through extensive medical training. It takes someone considerably more junior who can twist knobs and ask “1 or 2?”.
Now, should you be checked for glaucoma, torn retina, etc.? Of course you should, and those should certainly be checked for (and treated) by trained professionals.
In a vain effort to avoid sending this to the ignominy of the Pit, I would describe, at least in California, that anyone applying for a driver’s license must pass an eye exam. You can take the exam with your glasses or contacts on. If you pass it, (which nearly everybody does), the examiner (aka, the guy at the counter) will usually ask “Can you read that without glasses?” If you say no, then your license comes with a line on it “RSTR:Corr Lens” (restriction, corrected lenses required).
There are other restrictions you can have put on because of vision problems such as not being able to drive at night, etc.
If you flunk the vision test, you can go get some glasses that work and take the test again and get the joy of going to the DMV TWICE!
Does anyone have a cite that any state requires a perscription for eyeglasses? I’m not saying it isn’t so, I’m just not aware that it is.
I suspect that in most states, no such perscription is required. I suspect that most optical shops will grind whatever lenses you tell them you want (though they may not warrantee them without a professional perscription, since they are taking your word that those are really the lenses you need). I don’t think any DMV requires proof of a perscription, just that you can pass the basic visual accuity exam with whatever corrective lenses you bring in, whether professionally ground to a doctor’s prescription or fashioned in your garage out of paperclips and pop bottle shards.
I suspect that the only reason you can’t get your prescription from a machine is that such a machine would be costly enough and require enough maintenance that you wouldn’t actually see any saving versus getting a professional human to do the exam (and hence there is no market for making such machines.) My mother is an ophthalmologist. She has her nurses do the exams for my prescriptions. She’s there if there is any question about what I need, but I’m sure if she could save any money by firing one of her nurses and getting an automatic machine to do the routine part of the exams, she would. (I haven’t asked her about this, or about what the optometrists in her office do that her nurses can’t, but I will.)
Keep in mind that of the $800 bnorton payed for his new glasses, only $75 was for the actual eye exam. If anyone has a racket going on, its not his optometrist/ophthalmologist, but the manufacturers of high-fashion frames (and possibly the lens manufaturers). But of course, if he wants cheap plastic frames and discount lenses, they are both readily available. His particular optical shop may not offer them (or may not steer cutomers towards them) but any one-hour lense shop at the mall will likely have both in abundance.
That depends upon what type of glasses? If you are just getting the reading glasses at the drug store, the answer is obviously no.
But let’s say you new what sort of diopters you needed in each lens. Could you walk down to your local optician and say “Give me a pair of these …” and rattle off a prescription for glasses? If the optician were either licensed or registered in his/her state (it varies from state), the answer is no. The optician would ask for a prescription.
And if you brought the optician a prescription that was out of date, you would only get it refilled if you could prove that your existing glasses were broken or lost. I somehow believe that your ability to prove such a thing would be greatly facilitated if you told the optician that you were going to buy expensive frames.
FTC regulations require that all optometrists give you a copy of your prescription as soon as you want it and you are not required to buy your glasses or contacts from that doctor.
In California, opticians and their ilk, fall under the same regulatory board as MDs, the Medical Board of California.
You cleverly quote an $800 price instead of saying something like $400 each. Sure $800 sounds like a lot, but $400/each isn’t nearly as expensive sounding.
Frames are a fashion statement. While I agree with you that it seems to be a “racket”, the fact of the matter remains that you can buy frames for $30 or $3000, depending on what you’re looking for fashion-wise. If you want to buy the cheapest frames possible - and look like the nerd from Van Halen’s Hot For Teacher video - no one is stopping you. And expensive frames might seem to be a rip-off, the more expensive frames do have nicer features - better metals, better construction, nicer nose pads, those “snap back” temples (the ones you can pull “outside” without breaking), etc.
Lenses might also appear to be a rip-off. It’s true that the wholesale cost of “normal” lenses is around $3 - $5 but this doesn’t include the cost of mall rent, electricity, paying a decently skilled person to grind the lenses, etc. But then again, no one ever said that the wholesale price should be the retail price, either. Microsoft still charges $199 or so for Windows because it feels like the market will bear that price. After paying for R&D costs to develop any version of Windows, MS’s cost of making another copy for sale falls to around $1.00 (to press the CD and package it), but the only people you hear saying that it should only cost $5 are the same people to don’t know how the music industry works.
And of course they charge “per lens”. Some people have different prescriptions in each eye. While it’s not especially common, it’s also not exactly rare that someone might have decent enough vision in one eye to require only a “standard” lens in one eye and poor enough vision in the other to require a “high-index” lens. Or someone could have some acute astigmatism in one eye and not the other (like myself) and require a special lens in one eye only. Or someone could have some acute astigmatism in one eye and not the other In both cases, one lens might cost $40 and the other $100. That’s why they do that.
And trust me… if you’re over 40 and need bifocals, your LASIK is gonna cost you more than $875. My mother’s vision is pretty decent and she was quoted $1500 per eye. Mine’s effing terrible and a doctor quoted me $2200 per eye. Two very large practices in my home city advertise “$599 LASIK!” on the radio all the time. The fact of the matter is, one only offers it to x numbers of customers a month (like frequent flier miles seats on airlines) and both always find something “wrong enough” with your vision to disqualify you from the cheap procedure.
One absolute scam with the one hour places is the fact that they only keep their product lines in stock for a couple of months at a time. I’ve had two pairs of glasses where the temples broke and - guess what? - the store didn’t carry those models any more and couldn’t fix them - “but we’ll be happy to sell you a new pair!”
And you’d win that bet. The last eye exam I had was done, in part, with a computerized optical instrument that required nothing of me except to look into it and get a touch dizzy from the psychedelic swirls and patterns it projected. None of the usual “which is better, number one, or number two…this one or this one?” In not very much time it kicks out a full cylinder/axis/prism prescription. The opthamologist took these numbers as starting points to fine-tune things, using a case of hand-held lenses.
The automated Rx would have been just fine on its own for someone getting glasses, but as this was intended to be the last eye exam I’d ever need (excluding periodic checks for glaucoma and other eye diseases) they took the effort to get it all exactly right so they could plug the right numbers into the LASIK equipment.
It should be pretty obvious from the dictionary definition that the ability to drive is a right. If you are the proper age, have passed the necessary criteria, and don’t have any history where your right was revoked, you have the right to drive.
Just because your mom said “driving is a privilege, not a right” doesn’t make it a legal edict, or even true. As it turns out, it’s not true. In fact, as it turns out it’s not even logical, as the concepts of “privilege” and “right” are not mutually exclusive.
I Have been getting thorough eye exams for as long as I can remember;
I’m pretty sure it’s the ‘is it better with this lense’ part that determines my prescription;
I always doubt that I have instructed the doctor correctly. I only have some seconds to answer ‘this might be better’, and never leave satisfied that I have selected the best lenses.
Now, If I could go throgh the process with a machine, taking my time with no pressure at all… I’d jump at the chance.
My step-father was a wholesale optometrist who ran a small shop specializing in grinding lenses for the most difficult prescriptions that the opthamologists did not trust the large chain stores to get right. I learned a thing or two from him on this subject.
First of all he felt an optometrist usually does a better job at refraction (determining the prescription) than an opthamologist. This was mainly because that is all they do all day long. Who do you want to draw blood from you - the doctor or his/her blood drawing technician who does it all day?
Second, if you know where you want to buy your frames, most shops have an optometrist on staff who provides a complimentary eye exam as long as you buy your glasses there.
Third, optometrists are trained to look for many diseases of the eye, test for glaucoma, etc. and frequently refer people to M.D.'s when it is called for. They pride themselves on this training and get a lot of satisfaction from diagnosing things beyond their scope of practice.
Fourth (and most interesting to me) he said that his profession would go out of business fast if people weren’t so lazy. Have you ever seen that infomercial that says “Buy this eye training program and be free of glasses forever!”? He said that part of his training taught about vision exercises and they will dramatically improve or completely correct most common vision problems. These exercises require a high degree of commitment, especially in the beginning, but really do what they claim. If you really don’t want to pay exhorbitant prices for glasses, I’ll bet you can locate these exercises without paying the infomercial people either. These exercises have been around for decades.
No, they do not. Both MD’s and OD’s fall under the Department of Consumer Affairs, but optometrists fall under the board of optometry while MD’s fall under the medical board.
Unless you meant ophthalmologists, in which case you would be correct since they have MD’s.
I don’t know whether this is the case everywhere (though I imagine it is), but at least in Washington, your vision is checked prior to getting a driver’s license. To pass, you need 20/20. It’s also checked every time you get it renewed.
I doubt someone who purchased glasses after this point would choose a pair that would significantly hinder their vision.