One prerequisite of solving problems is having problems to solve. That is, first you must realize that there is a problem — an inconvenience or difficulty that you no longer accept as inevitable. Then you can ask questions and try to find answers.
Suppose the problem is that (a) you have imperfect eyesight, and (b) you’re lazy, busy, a shut-in, a cheapskate, or all four. You want to update your prescription without spending the time and money to visit an optometrist. Questions: Any way you can just do this at home for, say, $35? How about over the Internet?
If we ask Mr. Google about “online eye exams,” we find several sites offering tests that aim only to tell you whether it’s time for a visit to the eye doctor. Not good enough! But we also learn from TechCrunch.com about Opternative, a company co-founded by optometrist Steven Lee. Opternative plans to offer professional-grade online eye exams.
“Doing eye testing day in and day out, I thought ‘there has to be a better way to do this,’” Lee says.
Lee still faces regulatory and other hurdles. But I appreciate the ambition — also that we still have enough capitalism in our quasi-capitalist system to make a venture like this potentially profitable. And if Opternative succeeds, we’ll be able to take its prescription to another website and order an inexpensive pair of glasses or contact lenses over the Internet.
I like that vision.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
4 replies on “Perfect Vision”
OT:
“I don’t see Obamacare as something designed to offer healthcare. … I think the question comes down to a bigger one, which is, are we going to create a society where one hundred percent of everything is digitized and under central control?”
“Who is the governance system, and why are they behaving the way they are behaving? What we see is literally a psychopathic effort and intensity — whether it is in the energy area, whether it is in the currency area, whether it is in the food area, whether it is in the healthcare area — to get 100% central control and to use digital means to do it, and the question is why?”
“Well, you have a complete breakdown of internal financial controls in the US government. … You had over $4 trillion of what is called undocumentable adjustments and to this day, [these agencies] have never, as required by law, produced audited financial statements.”
“In my experience, government is not incompetent at all. … Gridlock is a cover story, incompetence is a cover story. There is a plan, you just can’t see what it is.”
https://www.caseyresearch.com/sound-money/episode-22-the-popsicle-index-catherine-austin-fitts-interview
The EPA did not provide effective oversight to ensure that purchase card holders and approving officials comply with internal control procedures.
Of $152,602 in transactions we sampled, we found $79,254 of prohibited, improper and erroneous
purchases. Some of the more egregious purchases
we identified were meals for an awards recognition ceremony and gym
memberships for EPA employees and their families
http://www.epa.gov/oig/reports/2014/20140304 – 14-P-0128.pdf
this is not incompetency. it is organized looting.
Rick, what have your comments to do with the topic?
Mr. Jacob, I disagree.
Eyes are important. This sounds like the newest fad- group examinations – have a group of people with the same or similar medical problems –JOINTLY/TOGETHER see a doctor, and get a prescription. Without checking each one.
This is the same- yes in good light can see this, cover the eye – is one (in the privacy of their home) doing so? I see this as a terrible situation.