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> For decades, the FDA has regulated hearing aids as a prescription medical device — an arrangement that adds to the cost and effort people must expend to get them. What is the rationale for this?
As well improper use can cause permanent damage.
There are a number of healthcare areas in the US that have been protected by regulation, but it’s increasingly unclear if this is good for patients, consumers, or public health at large. The increasing sentiment seems to be probably not. Vision care is another area I’d expect to see more changes and disruption coming down the pipeline. Vision care is very important and advanced cases require special skills, but it’s…
Ordinary GPs aren't experts and the equipment for doing vision checks is expensive and consumes space.
IMO, medical care should be completely re-organized. Get rid of GPs as a profession (outside of cruise ships and the military) and GP practices entirely. Instead, have community clinics for everyday medical needs spread out over the country that have a team of skilled nurses for triage with a number of subject-expert doctors at the second level, and large/university clinics for everything the community clinics can't deal with (urgent/trauma care, oncology).
That would also shorten training times and effort for new doctors by a significant degree - e.g. in Germany, an ophtalmologist requires a full medical degree (over six years, not counting waiting times because medical study places are short in supply) followed by five years of specialized training. Realistically, training any expert doctor now takes at least twelve to fifteen years... and that's frankly absurd, and part of why medical costs are so sky-rocketing. Not many students make the ridiculously high entry requirements, many don't survive that time (and sometimes literally - suicide rates among medical students are way above average!), and those who have their MD are left with fifteen years worth of student debt which means they have to charge extraordinary hourly rates simply to be able to pay back the loans.
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Improperly tuned, they will damage your hearing - a permanent effect.
How? Because you simply amplify the sound too much?
Hearing aids can exceed 120dB.
As well improper mid-long term use can cause comprehension and "hearing in difficult situations" issues.
Contact lenses next? It's amazingly stupid that I, as a tourist, who knows exactly what types of contacts I need, may need to get a US prescription for contacts.
I ordered an optometry kit from Amazon as my prescription changes by the hour most days. Was very interesting to play around and helped me isolate the 2 prescriptions that my eyes drift back and forth from. Something that eye doctors had given up on trying to help me.
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Not sure why vision checks require a doctor at all. In the end, they're just relying on your responses anyway: "What's better: A or B"? In fact, I'd go further and say it doesn't even require another person. I, for one, am glad to see this bill.
>require a doctor Just a note, but optometrists are "doctors" (because optometry is a doctoral degree), but not doctors in the colloquial sense, ie people with MDs who work in hospitals. Ophthalmologists are the MDs that specialize in eye disease, and are the ones that treat infection and do surgery.
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12 years ago, I walked into a second hand eye glasses shop in India and they had one of these machines. It was amazingly effective. I felt duped by all the optometrist appointments asking me about A or B.
To me, the tradeoff of an expensive modern machine vs an cheaper iterative process seems logical. I think it's funny that a second hand shop has the fancy equipment... but they must know it sells glasses more effectively. Here, the machine results are used as a starting point, validated by A/B but I don't know if the human part is effective or just theater.
> For decades, the FDA has regulated hearing aids as a prescription medical device — an arrangement that adds to the cost and effort people must expend to get them. What is the rationale for this?
I also don't believe deregulating the market is going to work. The reason prices are so high is because there is a small monopoly of manufacturers that control global supply and a small cadre of middle-men that are allowed to create whatever markup they like.
Deregulating the middle men doesn't really solve the fundamental problem. I would expect a lot of patent lawsuits to be filed against small manufacturers and distributors if the government gets it's way here.
It's an attempt to solve an endemic lack of regulation with even less regulation.
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There are so many cost barriers to treatments. It's definitely not for patients at this point. For instance, I am supposed to redo my sleep apnea test every so often. But it's out of pocket? Why bother, I know mine is due to my genetics (I'm not overweight). So why am I subjected to reproving my need for a prescription? For eyeglasses, if someone wants to continue the same prescription they can't. It's like healthcar…
> For eyeglasses, if someone wants to continue the same prescription they can't. What? You don't need a medical prescription to order glasses online. You can put in whatever numbers you want and they'll happily make them. You'd be an idiot to do so, however, as your vision can change with age.