Are the low priced deals too good to be true?
Be very careful here. The discount centers mission is to get a patient in to their clinic expecting a very low fee for LASIK. Through the "sales" process, basic items are added to the fee (like paying for postop care, custom treatments, etc) that typically get the fee up near $1800-2000 per eye. I hate this practice. Even worse, if they somehow pull off doing your LASIK for $599, then you might very well be exposed to old, unmaintained, out of date lasers with behind the times hardware and software. I don't know about you, but in 2010, I want my eyes operated on with 2010(or beyond) equipment, not the dusty stuff in the corner from 2003. This happens out there, so beware!
The surgery might be $599, but the preop anesthetic drops will cost you $1500. Seriously though, in life, you get what you pay for. This holds true in eye surgery. I tell patients you wouldn't buy a bargain-bin pacemaker or parachute.The come-on pricing you often see with LASIK is laden with asterisks and fine print. Sometimes postoperative care is not included. Often, a patient must fall within a very narrow range of prescriptions to qualify, and perhaps one in a hundred or fewer will actually qualify. Older machines are often used.The latest wavefront technology comes at a cost--there's actually a royalty paid to the laser manufacturers every time an eye is treated, and the amount of this royalty is generally hundreds of dollars per eye. Do the math...at $599 per eye, practictioners will need to cut every corner and STILL lose money with every case they do. I guess they figure they'll make it up on volume!The last decade is littered with news stories of discount LASIK providers who went out of business, leaving patients without any followup care, simply because this business model is absolutely unsustainable. If I were having any kind of surgery, I'd sure want my surgeon/office to be there a year, or five years downstream.
