A Load of Floss

Medical marketing tricks. The kind that we all fall for. The kind for which there seems to be no remedy.

Did you know that you have to get a "fresh" contact lens prescription every year or opticians won't dispense new ones?

This means that in addition to the hundred plus smackers I have to come up with annually (depending on how clumsy I have been), I have to cough up another couple of bills for the 'exam.' Rhymes with 'scam.'

Not only that, but unlike a prescription for glasses, your optometrist hangs on to your contact lens prescription as some sort of 'work product.' This means no comparison shopping for you, my friend. It is a neat, vicious, circle. You want contacts? Better ante up for an exam. Once you have that exam, though, you are stuck with that dispenser and whatever markup they choose to apply. How do they get away with this? They are my eyes, aren't they? I just paid you to service them, didn't I? It is as if you were to take your car in to be serviced and they refused to tell you what was wrong with it.

Apparently I am not alone in questioning these practices, for a cursory search at Google.com reveals that this issue has even been before the United States Supreme Court in Williamson v. Lee Optical Co. (1955). In fact, in California, new legislation has been enacted (AB 2020), effective as of January 1, 2003 to:

"Require optometrists to release contact lens prescriptions to patients following initialing fitting of the lenses...Therefore, there should be no charge for lenses used by an optometrist for an initial fitting of contact lenses."

Interestingly, at my last eye exam, in February of this year, the optometrist and her staff appeared to be unaware that the California state legislature called a, "willful violation of these practices unprofessional conduct."

Or dentists, don't get me started on dentists, and their evil little henchpersons, the hygienist. What the hell do they teach these people, anyway? They are as bad as beauticians with their pseudo-science gobbeldey-gook. First of all, a disclaimer, I have really good teeth, so maybe other people have staved off agonies by listening to their advice, but let me share with you a few gems.

Me: "So, flossing really helps cut down on bad breath, right?"

Hygienist: "Yes it does."

Me: "So, why don't you tell people that instead of maundering on about losing your teeth when you are 80?"

Hygienist: "I don't really get where you are going with this."

Me: "Well, Americans are obsessed with beauty and shiny teeth and otherwise being attractive, so wouldn't they be more likely to floss more regularly if you stressed the short term benefit of flossing over long-term consequences that may never happen?"

Hygienist: "Well, but then they would be flossing for the wrong reasons."

And another episode, I was at the tail end of a course of antibiotics, which tend to kill bacteria. A hygienist, unaware of this fact, took me in to a special room, hooked my mouth up to a camera and proceeded to tell me about the swarms of bacteria that live in my mouth and that required a special, optional, costly, care regimen.

Meanwhile, she was completely ignoring the fact that the camera was showing the odd, flaccid, bacterium, limping around like a dazed survivor of Gettysburg. Until I pointed that fact out to her, of course.

Why do you think I don't allow them near my head with their X-ray machines unless pistol whipped? I am not a crank, I believe in modern medicine. What I don't believe in is the competence of most of the support staff in our nation's medical offices, many of whom appear to be sub-literate cud chewers without any short-term memory.

Now my vet has joined their ranks, demanding that cats be vaccinated yearly, contrary to published statements by veterinary associations like the American Association of Feline Practitioners. Hmm, again, I am not a disbeliever in vaccines. My cats have been vaccinated, multiple times, but if he thinks I am spending another $300.00 a year to counter the dim probability that my cat will catch Chlamydia psittaci, he's got another think coming!

Why do I fight? Why struggle against caprice and greed? Why can I not pick my battles, I ask you? Every single time someone gives me a specious excuse for handing over my lettuce, its go time. Why?

Partly, it is personality, partly experience, and partly, a deeply held sense of mission.

To be honest, it seems to be physically impossible to restrain myself from spitting in the face of someone who is lying to me to make a buck. Literally, physically, impossible.

Further, I see so few people taking a stand. That's how they get away with it. Why do you think my dentist drives a new Beemer while I drive a pitted seven-year old Plymouth? Because she has all my money, that's why.

And what little money she leaves me, the OB-GYN takes, or the pediatrician, the vet, the optician, and of course, the insurance company, which denies what few claims I manage to submit amid a bewildering thicket of fine print, all designed to, you called it, take money from my bank account and transfer it to theirs.

Again, let me stress that I and my family, and sundry dependents are healthy and hearty, going for routine examinations, at periodic intervals suggested by reputable organizations. I can't imagine the horror of being sick in our society, and actually needing these people.

No, hardly anyone takes a stand ala Network anymore. I see it in my university classrooms, where the same three students answer all the questions while the rest of them stare blankly. I saw it as a student, where I was one of those three in my turn. Those of us who put our hands up rarely do it to show off (those folks are usually clinically insane, as is inevitably discovered when they turn in a senior honor's thesis that somehow links FEMA, the Knights Templar, and all the rest of the usual subjects into a hideous conspiracy run out of the local Elks Lodge).

Instead, we three put our hands up out of embarrassment, for the poor teacher, confronted with shining examples of mediocrity and apathy. Out of embarrassment for those lumps we sit next to, because like it or not, some clever writer from Time Magazine will take them as representative examples of my generation. Out of embarrassment for our society, which has seen the number of functional illiterates increase by more than 17 million between 1992 and 2002. Where less than half of adults read "literature" anymore.

And so, I raise my hand, and ask a question, and find it not well received, this impertinent asking of questions. Yet I continue, because I believe in fighting against entropy and apathy, and for truth and justice, order, and peace.

So, when I die, of the inevitable stroke, all I ask is that my headstone read:

She Never Learned to Pick Her Battles.