ResMed simply has better technology than others, and is a de-facto monopoly.
Prescription glasses are basically just chunks of not-too-special plastic that you can buy online for $20 or less, but people refuse to believe that the whole industry is a scam when I try to tell them about it
Btw Zeiss (known to HNers for making EUV lithography hardware) also makes glasses and you can buy them online. Some of their lenses are $700. Not worth it for me, but I can definitely see how someone would be willing to pay even more for those optical specs
One is SV AS +2.5 sphere 0 cyl duravision platinum uv 1.60 index (guess this is what you’re talking about) uvprotect
The other is the same but 1.25 sphere
Hope it helps
Don't scratch them. It's simple as that. Wash lens with soap. It's as simple as that.
You can choose the material you put into them. Ray-Ban Scamglasses from the Scam Shop are definitely NOT better. Even Costco glasses aren't better.
Anything insurance touches becomes expensive, because insured individuals are no longer price sensitive, so there is no incentive to lower costs by providers.
My employer pays for my vision insurance, whether I want it or not, so I may as well maximize the benefit with the "best" hardware I can get for "free."
And buy the glasses at Zenni et al.
Likewise, store bought lenses are available with $20 out of pocket expenses.
What is wrong with this? Apple does it, lots of managed healthcare organizations like Kaiser Permanente and UnitedHealth and CVS do it, auto manufacturers do it, etc.
The other companies you mention are actual insurance: They cover rare, and unexpected events. As opposed to covering once every two year glasses, on a schedule.
In truth the insurance is just a scam because glasses cost 1/10th what they say.
Now that would be OK if there was actual competition, but there isn't, they are basically a monopoly - as soon as a competitor arises they buy them.
Online glasses are not the same market as a physical store where you can try them on.
https://www.walmart.com/browse/health-medicine/prescription-...
I see lots of $30 and $60 options.
The insurance is only a thing because the tax code allows it as a way for employers to pay people with untaxable money in the form of insurance, so it is not a real insurance market.
Further it’s got some serious conflict of interest going on with how the benefits are structured. So a plan may cover 1 300$ par of glasses, but not 2 pairs of 150$ glasses specifically to minimize the risk of a race to the bottom etc.
But because of how they do it they hide that. $40/month for 2 years = $960 "for insurance" which gives you the right to buy glasses worth around $20 or so.
All the number are inflated leaving people with the impression that glasses cost $400 - they don't.
We have the internet now, with plenty of other vendors willing to sell eyeglass frames and lenses for cheaper.
High profit margins are also bad when it's something people need.
The competition isn't working right, for a variety of reasons, and so the mere existence of competition does not make those problems disappear.
Pretty sure you can go to most Walmarts and find much cheaper corrective eyewear than Luxxotica too.
https://www.walmart.com/browse/health-medicine/prescription-...
So here's the thing with WalMart and Luxottica - their insurance does not fully cover WalMart! They give you a significantly reduced amount with WalMart (or Costco), that's how you know it's fraudulent - they only want to cover their own stores, that's not a normal behavior for "insurance".
https://www.cleverdude.com/content/costco-optical-vs-walmart...
https://clark.com/health-health-care/costco-optical-eyeglass...
Would it be unreasonable to say a lot of potential excellence isn't actualized because:
>Whenever a new upstart brand came along they simply acquired them.
and they don't ever actually compete with a near peer?
Oh man, I worked for a long time on the east coast in industries that didn't give me much exposure to startups during the 90s-00s, so one day I met an ex-Google developer at a meetup who dropped into the conversation that he once worked for Google and then waited for me to be impressed. It was a long awkward wait because I didn't realize at the time that that was supposed to impress me, and instead just said something like "oh cool" and the conversation just abruptly stopped in the weirdest way you can imagine.
These sorts of market controlling companies are weird to work for. On the one hand they have a certain excellence that keeps their market lock year over year. On the other there’s a strangulating incestuous monoculture that self perpetuates a view of brilliance. You see this internally at other companies with these locks - google for one, googlers, especially hey day googlers, walk out with an ego the size of their market share. I’ve scrupulously avoided working there despite many chances over the years because of the smugness - not that I couldn’t work with that environment, I’m afraid I would adopt it as well.