I Hate My Government Part I: Contacts
I have been running very low on my disposable contacts for quite some time now. Were it not for the extraordinary lifetime of the ones I am currently using, I would certainly be out by now. Billed as two week disposables, I have actually been wearing these for much longer – I don’t know exactly how long, but certainly over six months, and, I believe, perhaps even more than a year. I have one pair left, and I decided I really probably should move along, since I cannot rely on these guys to hold out forever. Past ones have torn, been lost, began irritating my eyes, and so on. In fact, my right contact is beginning to irritate my eye sometimes, but so far I have usually been able to get it feeling ok again after a while. Nevertheless, all signs point to my need to move along.
So today, I began checking out where to get some more. I went to 1800contacts.com, and was thrilled to find that I could simply enter in the same information contained on the bottom on my current contacts box and get some more. But there was a catch: I needed to enter my eye doctor’s info. The problem this created for me is that I haven’t seen an optomitrist in a long time – so long that the only doctor I’ve ever seen moved to a new private practice. My old prescription is still working fine, and I don’t see any particular reason to have another check-up at this time. But why do they need the doctor’s info at all? When I checked with other contact-delivery stores, the story was the same. All wanted to talk to the doc that I hadn’t spoken to in 3 years. Why would they need that info?
A little link titled “Why do we need your birthday?” led to more information:
A Federal Law passed in February 2004 requires us to verify your prescription with your eye care provider. Many eye care providers use your birthday to find your prescription information.
When did contacts become a controlled substance? Who will be harmed if I order the incorrect contacts? What are their addictive properties? What possible cause could there be to require contact distributors to check in with an eye doctor?
And the simple answer is, of course, that some group of optomirists lobbied to make it so. By requiring that eye doctors be in the loop, they entrenched their own position, making it illegal for people to take them out of the loop. They became another layer of government-enforced oligarchy.
The end result is that I don’t know if I’ll ever get new contacts without jumping through a series of ridiculous hoops to get there. All due to a government that has replaced a love of liberty with a subtle – but very real – tyranny.
July 11th, 2005 at 07:40:13 am
I think that the worse case is in the regular medical industry. It would certainly help out everyone if people didn’t have to be licensed doctors to “practice” medicine; if independant nurses were a sort of first line defense against poor health, instead of having to see a doctor for everything, healthcare costs would be much lower.
The same thing that you are talking about goes for perscription drugs.
July 11th, 2005 at 03:15:55 pm
Contacts are prescription devices, as they are quite capable of permanently damaging your eyes under the right circumstances, and their use should be regularly supervised by an eye doctor. By law, an eye doctor is required to give you your glasses prescription (which you could then have filled anywhere) after an exam if you ask for it, but they are not required to do so for contact lenses. Many make their money by selling you the first year’s worth of contacts at inflated prices as a “trial” and not providing you with a prescription which you could get filled elsewhere. If you find your eye doctor is doing this, it is time to find a new eye doctor…
All that aside, I don’t think there should be laws to “protect people from themselves.” While I think it is a good idea to get regular eye exams, I certainly don’t think there should be laws like the one in question.
July 12th, 2005 at 10:18:40 am
Who will be harmed if I order the incorrect contacts?
The average SAT score in the US is 1000 :)
Your “liberties” are being infringed upon because of how much liberty there is in pursuing “justice.”
July 12th, 2005 at 02:37:18 pm
Scissors are quite capable of permanently damaging my eyes under the right circumstances as well :-).
July 13th, 2005 at 06:25:48 am
dc: explanation?
July 14th, 2005 at 05:03:13 pm
1) there are smart people
2) there are dumb people
3) there are rich people
4) there are poor people
dumb, rich people who manage to damage themselves have the capital to bring individuals or institutions to court and then to victory suing for damages. Forced to protect themselves, the gov’t or firms or whathaveyou end up erecting needless rings of fires to make sure they are protected from, well, bs lawsuits.
There are of course smart rich people or smart poor people or dumb poor people that this stuff happens to, but in the case of the first two, I’m guessing not too often, and in the case of the latter, well, they won’t have the cash to drag you through the dirt.
It sounds like this isn’t so much a “protect people from themselves” law as a “protect yourself by protecting people from themselves”.
July 15th, 2005 at 04:17:11 am
Absolutely not. Just like in other biological systems, there are classes of organisms called parasites. They survive by exploiting vulnrabilities in the system – living off of what they can steal or strong arm from their environment while giving nothing back.
A prime example of this is the Michael Jackson trial – while I have no opinion of the case (I know next to nothing about the trial), the parents of the child are professional parasites – they live by abusing rules that are set in place.
Infact, by definition, each rule that is created creates a new rule that a parasite can exploit. This has nothing to do with dumb/smart and rich/poor. This is straight Machivelli vs Jesus(or Buddha/etc.). In most peoples’ dealings the Machivellis lose over time to “grudgers” – people who have nothing to do with dishonest people. Laws, no matter how carefully crafted, have the effect of dampening this effect.
This has nothing to do with anyone protecting themselves. This is all about people using the system to prey on others. With out the system in place, there would be no predation in this manner.
May 9th, 2006 at 07:47:18 pm
You need to look at it from a different perspective. We’ve come a long way toward personal freedom. Backup 250 years. The A-holes whos lives aren’t full unless they are controlling other people’s lives were way worse back then. Back then they would burn you at the stake for doing something that you could not have possibly been doing. (witchcraft) Need I mention slavery? The real delusion is that you were ever free. At no time in this country was anyone EVER free to pursue life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Some other A-hole has always been there with the power to put their nose in your business. With the arcane medical laws being enacted however, I’ll agree that we’re taking a step in the wrong direction.
Our forefathers, as brilliant as they were did not forsee this amount of meddling with other’s pursuits of happiness. Had they done that a “self-medication” amendment would have made tremendous advances for personal freedom. Everyone should have the right to doctor THEMSELVES, they know way better than a doctor how they actually FEEL. If you’re going to doctor OTHERS, then perhaps laws are needed. How you FEEL means nothing in this country however, all that matters is who you pay.
I hate my country as well.
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