Lasik Remains a Luxury Procedure, a new AP story that purports to look back on a decade of laser vision correction:
A lack of health insurance coverage keeps the procedure a luxury item, affordable only to people who can spare $3,000 to $5,000.
The story fails to mention that Lasik prices declined 38 percent from 1998 to 2004.
Perhaps lasik does remain a luxury good, but the lack of price data seems like a serious omission from the story given its headline and retrospective nature. (I looked at the article because I hoped it would mention 1995-2005 price changes–it’s a pain to find data period, and moreso on a subject where most search hits basically point to advertisements.)
I won’t go for corrective vision surgery until the right combination of deterioration of my eyesight and improvement in the expected outcome of such surgery occurs–probably a decade or more from now.
I’d prefer to wait for replacement with intelligently designed (by bio-engineers) eyes with vastly greater capabilies than my current amazing yet severely limited evolved set–better for watching the scenery from my future driverless car.