who agrees laser eye treatment should be part of NHS free treaments?!

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You must be one of those who believe that laser eye surgery is a "cure" for defective eyesight. If it were true I'd agree with you, unfotunately it's not. Laser doesn't cure anything. A nearsighted or farsighted eye will always be nearsighted or farsighted after the surgery. The laser just turns your cornea into a corrective lens, but nearsightedness or farsightedness have nothing to do with your cornea. They are caused by the abnormal length of your eyeball. After surgery you may see perfectly but your eye remains as defective as it was before. Furthermore the re-shaping of the cornea is dangerous and your eyesight could be pemanently damaged.

Sorry, but Lasik is considered cosmetic surgery just as a nose job is cosmetic surgery. I do not believe that private or public health insurance, which is supported by pulic taxes, should pay for someone to look better. If contact lenses are properly cared for and only worn for the length of time as instructed by your optician, you should not have many problems.

In addition, 5% of lasik post op patients are worse off after surgery than they were before. It is not always the best alternative and you should not have Lasik surgery until your vision has stabilized, usually in your early to mid twenties, so you have plenty of time to save for it, if you feel the risks are worth it. You could also look into Orthokeratology (Otho-K) which is a method where you sleep with special contact lenses that reshape your eye, so you do not have to wear glasses during the day. It only works for a day or two, so you do have to sleep with the lenses most nights. I doubt the NHS pays for Ortho-K either.

http://www.allaboutvision.com/contacts/o… -

I wouldn't agree with you about contacts. I've worn contacts for 40 years and don't have issues with them. Neither do I find the problems you mention with glasses other than playing sport. I don't agree that lasik should be a priority for the NHS. Its not suitable for everyone and isn't suitable for children. Before I prioritized that I would look at giving children contacts on teh NHS. I would look at taking VAT off glasses,. The NHS has limited money and what you say above is a gross exaggeration of the problems of not having perfect vision. Either contacts or glasses work fine with minimal effort and care.

Glasses are very annoying but I'd rather wear glasses than get a laser eye treatment.

Some of your answer sounds like a laser surgeon trying to advertise how much better it is having it done than wearing glasses/contacts

If you're over 50 then trying to correct myopia with laser eye surgery will just shift the focusing problem to the near vision. This is because theres a limit to how near/ far our crystalline lens can adjust. (And this range narrows with age.)

To me i think the NHS is a joke. In the past 50 years they have offered dentistry and other treatments when these were already outdated and proven uneffective (in the longrun) when compared to private treatment.

Fine i got my teeth pulled out free on the NHS but my family paid thousands of pounds to give me braces to sort out the side effects of their mistaken actions.
Im sure lots of people suffer from having backward and cheap NHS options thrown at them. And these people weren't in a position to know the benefits they missed out on if they had paid a bit extra for private healthcare.

Also where do we draw the line on funding the NHS. People can keep thinking up new things that they want done to them. New things can always be corrected etc.
We will soon end up with having 99% of our taxes going into funding the NHS.

Seems like these days most of the people going into UK hospitals forget that death is natural. We are lucky to be alive and to get a chance at life. Now its all about refining and extending our lives, michael jackson style.

Anyway laser eye surgery in the majority of cases is unnecessary.
People who originally wanted good natural vision should have simply been told that the vision problem existed, advised on how to correct any contributing bad vision habits. and then possibly have plus power lens treatment to bring the eyeball back to a normal spherical shape. Fingers crossed these people would then end up back to normal with 20/20 vision.
We currently have a mess on the high street with ill-informed people wasting money every year on glasses and contact lenses and being miserable just because of it.

I will not support laser eye surgery. But i would like constraints to be placed on the actions of high street opticians