- A congressional bill to codify Roe: abortion rights groups can’t stand it.
- Life expectancy declined in every state in 2020.
- State with the longest life expectancy: Hawaii.
- Sometimes it’s better to forget your health insurance and pay cash.
- Electric shock therapy that seems to work.
- More on the idea that if you grow up poor it pays to have rich friends.
- WSJ editors slam Fauci.
Category: News and Events
Are Eyeglasses Held Hostage to Enrich Optometrists?
About the time I reached 40-years of age many of my peers began having trouble with their arms being too short or the print on newspapers being too small. Often it was both. I didn’t have the same problem but about 10 years ago I realized I couldn’t read highway signs that were blocks ahead. I went to an optometrist for an eye exam and he wrote me a prescription for eyeglasses. In the past 10 years I’ve seen an optometrist four times and each time the prescription had not changed.
Here’s the deal. If I break a pair of glasses that worked perfectly and it’s been more than a year since my eye exam, I am required to get an eye exam in order to replace my glasses. This happened to me once when my glasses fell between my car seat and broke when I adjusted the seat. Although my optometrist told me he didn’t expect my vision would change for 10 years, the law still requires me to have a valid prescription even if I’m only needing an extra pair of glasses. It varies by state. Some states allow prescriptions to be valid for longer than a year.
Tuesday Links
- What Noble Laureate gene editors don’t seem to want to talk about: can they change the evolution of the human race?
- Eye hospital travels from place to place – inside an airplane.
- How could Pickleball (a wimpy sport in my view) be sending so many people to the ER?
- Your pharmacist can now prescribe Paxlovid. But does Paxlovid work if you have already been vaccinated? and How did the FDA get the power to decide who can prescribe?
- Monkeypox: Trump secured the right to 13 million vaccine doses and ordered 1.4 million for emergency use in 2020. So why are all those doses being stockpiled in Washington?
Government’s Role in Health Care Keeps Growing
This is Brian Blase in Health Affairs:
More than one in four Americans is now enrolled in Medicaid.
Close to 20 percent of all enrollees are only eligible for the program because the Biden administration has extended the COVID public health emergency far past the time of an actual public health emergency.
Only 4.5 million people who are lawfully present in the United States lack health insurance and are not eligible for Medicaid, a subsidized exchange plan, or employer-sponsored insurance. This equals 1.7% of the under-65 population.