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Comment by marinmania | Hacker News Reader

And the lowest hanging fruit doesn't even necessarily have to do with AI or robotic tech.

In the US you need a prescription within the last year to buy contact lenses. European countries do not require this. Not only does this mean contacts are more expensive and come from fewer suppliers, but demand for appointments with eye doctors would never go down, even though a test of vision could easily be done now by an automated machine where you choose a series of A/B options.

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>In the US you need a prescription within the last year to buy contact lenses.

I was told you even need prescription to buy glasses, which is ridiculous.

Even many places online require it, but some just let you input the values.

When I said this to an overnight glasses website's customer care they basically said if I ordered without a prescription I'd be committing a crime.

You really can't make this up!

>In the US you need a prescription within the last year to buy contact lenses. European countries do not require this.

Same here in Japan. I just buy my contact lenses from a shop online; I don't need a prescription at all. The only reason to go to the optometrist is when I feel my lenses are no longer the correct prescription (since your eyes change over time).

And for the eye-health tests that eye doctors try to use to justify yearly visits, that's done for free at the annual health check that everyone gets. Unlike the US with its weird system that considers eyes and teeth to not be necessary for health, those are all covered by the same single health insurance that you normally get, either through your employer or from the government.

Maybe for a basic eye exam, but they're also checking for things like glaucoma. Glaucoma in particular is tricky because you may not notice early on, but any damage done to your eyes before treatment is permanent.

In my experience, the cost for glasses/contacts is mostly in actually buying them anyways. Therefore, I just go get my eye exam done and then just buy them online for much cheaper than any retail store. Supposedly the cheap online glasses aren't as good, but they're good enough in my experience and then I don't feel quite so bad when I inevitably lose them somewhere.

The vison test is to ensure your eyes are checked for things other than what correcion you need. Though machines do most of that.

For healthy adults a yearly eye exam isn't necessary.

Forcing people to do it just to get a contact prescription is indeed a cash grab.

But yes, they will sell it to you as being for your own good.

You can get a paper copy of your contact lens prescription, which can be photographed and uploaded to online contact lens sellers.

Those sellers are incentivized not to look too closely at your prescription and whether the year has been altered.

Obviously breaking the rules doesn't make it less of a cash grab but at least one can work around it.

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