Optometrist Response to Atlantic’s Article on The Eye Exam “Scam”
Your eye exam is not a scam. Glasses and contact lenses are medical devices.
When you notice a change in your vision, it can be caused by a host of other things. For example, I’ve seen…
– patients who were unaware that they had diabetes, but were diagnosed based on the appearance of the retina at the back of their eyes
– patients who didn’t know they had high blood pressure, but again were diagnosed after an eye exam
– a patient who thought she had dry eye, and was using drops suggested by the pharmacist, but it turned out to be an inflammatory eye condition linked with thyroid disease
– patients with retinal holes which required laser surgery to prevent retinal detachment
– 2 patients that came in for a routine exam, but ended up having an eye tumour 
On the less “scary” side, I’ve seen plenty of people after they tried to order a higher powered contact lens themselves, thinking they needed something stronger, but they did it incorrectly and ended up giving themselves a headache. Or they ordered glasses online after modifying their glasses prescription a bit and couldn’t see out of the new ones. I’ve seen TONs of people with burning, itchy, red eyes who tried to self-medicate with over-the-counter antibiotic drops, which didn’t help. Do you really trust yourself to know what you need without going to the doctor? Your optometrist is not just a barrier to getting glasses… we’re here to help you take care of your eyes and catch preventable causes of vision loss! 
Eye exams might seem simple when everything is going well, but it takes years of training for me to rule out eye disease and other more sinister causes of a prescription change.
This author as simply upset because he was too unprepared to have spare glasses or contact lenses. If you use medication, it’s your own responsibility to have a supply wherever you go. It’s NOT a local doctor’s job to give it to you, sight unseen. Don’t be a statistic in preventable vision loss!
The main takeaway from this should be to make sure you always have a backup pair of glasses 
Yascha Mounk – It is very irresponsible to encourage people to risk their eye health like this
(This is a response to the article The Great American Eye-Exam Scam in the Atlantic )
