The Optometry Racket

By Alex Tabarrok.

"Every year I curse the optometry racket when I run out of contact lenses and have to return to the optometrist to get a “new” prescription. It’s a service that I don’t want and don’t need but am forced to buy by US law which require patients to have a recent doctor’s prescription to buy eyewear. I can stretch out the time by buying months in advance, sometimes I buy when abroad, for a few years I managed to evade the law by buying from Canadian internet sellers but that route has mostly been shut down. Writing in the Atlantic Yascha Mounk notes that around the world no prescription is needed:

In every other country in which I’ve lived—Germany and Britain, France and Italy—it is far easier to buy glasses or contact lenses than it is here. In those countries, as in Peru, you can simply walk into an optician’s store and ask an employee to give you an eye test, likely free of charge. If you already know your strength, you can just tell them what you want. You can also buy contact lenses from the closest drugstore without having to talk to a single soul—no doctor’s prescription necessary.

The excuse for the law is that eye exams can discover other problems. Sure, trade offs are everywhere. Let people make their own decisions. as Mounk concludes:

Like the citizens of virtually every other country around the world, Americans should be allowed to buy any pair of glasses or set of contact lenses at a moment’s notice. While the requirement to get a medical exam from an optometrist who has spent a minimum of seven years in higher education may have good effects in some cases, it also creates unreasonable costs—and unjustifiable suffering….Put Americans in charge of their own vision care, and abolish mandatory eye exams."