In the United States, a lot of people are living without proper healthcare. It is a nation where nearly one third of the population, or around eighty million people, are living with inadequate health insurance, or no health insurance at all, and where there are over three million people with severe to moderate visual impairment that are not going to the eye doctors for exams or purchasing glasses to correct the impairment. Having significant vision impairment can affect many aspects of an individual’s life, and there are statistics linking vision impairment with mobility and social class of individuals. Aside from those facts, there are also many health issues that can go dangerously unchecked without attending regular eye appointments, as well as general health appointments.

The High Costs of Being Healthy

Even for individuals with health insurance, making an appointment for any sort of medical checkup can involve a lot of difficult factors. First, since the appointments need to be made during the business day, it might mean making an individual miss a day of work and possibly a day of pay. If you are without insurance or without proper insurance to cover the full cost of the appointment, on top of missing that day of pay, you are also going to be paying out of pocket expenses. These out of pocket expenses can add up to be quite a lot of money. For eye exams, the appointments can range from $50 to $100, and if glasses are needed, you are looking at another $75 to $150.

In a recent survey, over forty percent of people surveyed stated that they did not go to the eye doctors each year because of the cost or lack of insurance.

The Importance of Eye Appointments

In the survey mentioned above, the second major factor for people not attending regular eye exams had to do with the fact that they did not think they needed them. Even if you have perfect vision or can see for miles without squinting, doctors will still recommend that everyone gets a routine eye exam just for the same reasons that people with white teeth should still go to the dentist—there are more than superficial things to inspect when it comes to eyes. These range from eye diseases like glaucoma or diabetic retinopathy, which can both only be seen by having a doctor check the health of your eyes, to as eye diseases like amblyopia, a disease that causes the stronger eye to take control and possibly cause near blindness in the other, weaker eye. Another is strabismus, which is considered crossed eyes and can lead to amblyopia, to other diseases like high blood pressure and high cholesterol, which can be seen by an eye doctor examining your eyes’ blood vessels and other parts. All of these things can be detected early on with routine eye exams.

It is people who avoid eye appointments, and of course, normal doctor appointments, due to lack of insurance that are facing the biggest health risks today because routine checkups can catch minor problems within the body that would not become major issues, unless they go unchecked. And, if uninsured individuals continue to miss minor health issues, they will grow into major ones that can be life threatening and expensive.

Eye health matters for everyone. It is important to regularly check the health of your eyes for vision purposes, as well as overall health purposes, though the lack of insurance coverage or the high cost of eye appointments makes attending eye exams each year a difficult task for millions of Americans.

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About the author: Rita Spencer is a writer for Ozeal Glasses. Ozeal Glasses is a group of ambitious people looking to make a difference in the prescription glasses world and promoting eye health across multiple nations.