Lasik Surgery Cost
This is a great article (updated in June 2007) that discusses the costs for various popular eye surgeries: Cost of LASIK Eye Surgery.
Here’s a quote to give you an idea of how much you’ll probably pay for lasik corrective surgery PER EYE:
LASIK prices, after rising for several years, seemed to stabilize in 2006 and 2007. Industry sources report that the average LASIK price in late 2006 was about $1,950. In 2007, LASIK and laser-based procedures charged at a single price (no extra charges added on for new technologies) cost an average $2,099 (see charts below).
The article attributes the rising costs of lasik eye surgeries to newer, more expensive technologies like wavefront-guided lasik and intralase.
Since most insurance doesn’t cover lasik surgery it’s a good thing that affordable financing is available!
I went to Kleiman Evangelista (www.lasiksurgery.com), to get my lasik surgery done. I got the blade free HD lasik and it was very affordable. I think it was about $750 per eye. Good luck to anyone that is going to be getting lasik soon, it will change your life.
My name is Patrick Sheahan. I had lasik eye surgery at the age of 23. When I went in for a consultation at Lasik Plus they said I was a perfect candidate. I was only -1.25 in each eye and could almost make due without glasses. After the lasik surgery my left eye slowly started to deteriorate. I was getting dizzy spells and migraine headaches daily. I started taking pain killers. I went to my optometrist to see if I could get a pair of glasses because all I could see out of my left eye was light. She told me that my left cornea was severely damaged and it was shaped like a football. I immediately made an appointment to see Dr Gerald Horn of Lasik Plus, the man who performed my lasik surgery. He made me and my grandfather wait for 5 hours in the waiting room. When I finally got in to see him he admitted there was a major complication and blamed the laser not himself. Dr Horn said that there may have been a malfunction in the laser and there was nothing he could do for me. Dr Horn was very rude to me and my grandfather. He rushed us out of his office before answering all of our questions. He told us he had a meeting to go and if we had any other questions we had to make another appointment. In the following weeks I consulted many corneal experts who came up with the same conclusion that I needed a corneal transplant. After a proper donor was found I had had my transplant done on July 10, 2003. A corneal transplant is not a pleasant procedure. They cut the cornea out of your eye, replace it with a donor’s cornea and in my case it took over 30 stitches in my eye. The removal of the stitches is done a few at a time, only when the stitch loosens with a needle like instrument while you are conscious, which resulted in numerous doctor visits. I had to pay 18,000 dollars for that surgery. I also paid 4,000 for a lens implant procedure done on October 14, 2005. My doctor has told me to prepare for many other future procedures and that my cornea can reject at any time. So far I have lost almost 2 years of income as a police officer and have depleted my entire savings including my 401K. I have since been able to return to work, however had to be assigned to a different division (because of my eyesight) with a lesser rate of pay. I will never be able to work the street again. I consulted a lawyer who paid experts to look over my files. In Illinois I was told you need an expert witness to testify on your behalf. After further investigation I found out that all of these experts were lasik eye doctors themselves and were very reluctant to testify against each other. I am not trying to scare people with my story I just don’t want this to happen to anyone else. My story is also on lasiksucks4u.com If anyone wants to contact me or has any other questions feel free to email me at Psheahan12@yahoo.com
I can see trying to save money on lasik, but eyes are not necessarily the best thing to skimp on. Not exactly something you can have replaced easily if your eyes are ruined.
Mar 1, 2008
Michael Heidemann
Las Vegas NV
This is an open letter to Lasik of Nevada, Dr. Rothman and staff. I am writing this letter in order to best describe my experience with Lasik of Nevada, their staff, and Dr. Rothman the surgeon.
Approximately 3 months ago I went to Lasik of Nevada office to get a price on having both my wife and my eyes corrected with lasik. I had been to Valley Eye and had received a quote for a total of $1000. to have both eyes corrected for the prescription needed. I thought I would get a second opinion. While at the office of Lasik of Nevada I spoke with the office manager Pat. Although there were postcards throughout the office (Lasik of Nevada) offering lasik eye surgery for less than $300 per eye I was told that it only represented operations that required very slight specific corrections. Their regular price was over $1500. per eye for the average correction my wife and I requested. When I told Pat that I was able to get this surgery done with my prescription at Valley Eye for $500. per eye he said he could negotiate a price of $800. per eye. In that price he offered the same 1 yr enhancement program that was offered by Valley Eye. He mentioned plugs and agreed to have permanent ones installed in my eyes in the $800. per eye charge. This included all visits to the on staff optometrist, and other follow up visits that would be necessary.
I agreed and both my wife and I had the surgery and were charged the agreed upon $800. an eye for the surgery. After having a good experience with our surgeries I had my 35 yr old daughter flown in from Austin Texas on the last week of January, 2008. She was examined and again met with Pat the office manager to obtain a price. He said that he would honor the same price and conditions that were given to me 3 months earlier.($800. per eye including 1 yr enhancement and plugs) I agreed and set up an appointment to have my daughters eyes lasik procedure done March 1, 2008.
We arrived on March 1 at the appointed time. Lasik of Nevada requires that you pay for the procedure at the time of the surgery. I reached for my wallet and was told that the price I was quoted was not valid. This was 15 minutes before my daughter was to receive her surgery!!!! They had fired the office manager, Pat with whom I had made the agreement for my daughters surgery. After several minutes of backroom discussion between the Dr. and office staff my daughter and I were brought into a small room with Dr. Rothman and his new office manager. Dr. Rothman spoke to both my daughter and myself about the price of the surgery. He said that “the price I was quoted was far to low and that he would not honor the price his office manager had quoted me.” He also said “the office manager, Pat, with whom I had made the agreement was no longer working there and he simply would not honor the agreement of his employee.” This was even though both my wife and myself received this price as it was agreed upon 3 months earlier without problems for the same surgery. I was taken back by the fact that this agreement was made with his office manager who was the only one I was aware of negotiating prices both 3 months prior and up to 2 weeks before my daughter was to have her surgery preformed. I could not understand why he would not honor his own employees pricing when earlier both my wife and I had the same person, Pat, give us the price which we paid for the Lasik surgery at Lasik of Nevada. While in the small room Dr. Rothman said that “he was uncomfortable discussing prices and wanted me to continue the discussion with his current manager.” While still in the room with my daughter and I Dr. Rothman said that “if he was uncomfortable he would simply not do the procedure.” He was very uncomfortable discussing the price any further and said he didn’t want to do the procedure if he had to honor his employees quoted price.” He was not willing to give an inch and the feeling both my daughter and I had was it was “either his way, or the highway.” The Dr. offered no compromise himself. There appeared to be no consideration for his patient (my daughter) it was all about the money. It appeared as a strong arm tactic since the change in price was not mentioned at earlier visits but was revealed 15 minutes before surgery. Dr. Rothman left the office acting like he could care less that my daughter had spent hundreds of dollars to get here from Texas. She also missed week of work.
The Dr. left us in the room with his office manager. She said that a new charge of $250. For the optometrist had now been imposed to replace the previous $150 charge for this service before. I said that I would compromise and pay the additional $100. Even though I had agreed earlier with Pat (the past office manager) that the price would not be higher than I had paid before ($800 per eye). She did not want to give an inch and said that the additional $250. would have to be paid. I agreed to pay the additional $250 to try to compromise. She continued and wanted to remove the 1 year enhancement feature saying that I would be charged $499. per eye if any were needed. This would mean that it would be a minimum of $1200. more than the original price I was quoted a month earlier if enhancements were needed. In addition she wanted an additional $200. for permanent plugs (which the office manager Pat had included in the $800. per eye) bringing the total to over $1400. more than the original agreement. I said that I would pay the additional $250. beyond the quoted total price but would insist that the balance of the agreement with Pat remain (1 year enhancements and plugs)
It cost over $500. to have my daughter flown from Austin Texas to stay for the week to have her surgery. She had been without her contacts for 2 weeks and suffered a fall from a horse which cracked her ribs from not seeing as well thru glasses. This happened because she was required to wear her glasses and remove her contacts for 2 weeks prior to surgery by Dr’s orders. No consideration was given to my daughter……..Dr. Rothman and his office manager remained firm counting on the expenses ($500 airline tickets) and inconvenience of having to wear glasses would cause me to cave in to their demands.
I told the office manager that if this is the final word on how they are going to treat me that I would simply write a letter so that others would have the ability to see how their office and staff treated one of their patience. I write this letter so that anyone considering surgery with Dr. Rothman or Lasik of Nevada will protect themselves from there pricing procedure. You cannot count on what you are told even if you have been thru all pre operation procedures and given a price by the office manager. I was not offered a copy of the contract at the time the price was set by the office manager Pat, on either my previous visits or on my daughters visits. I’m not sure, but I don’t think this is standard practice with all Lasik offices. I wasn’t worried about it since the first 2 operations with the same company and same office manager in charge were honored at the price quoted and the procedures quoted for that price. I trusted what their office manager said and the pricing and procedures that were promised would be honored since both the procedure and price were honored twice earlier. It was only on the day of the operation that the paperwork was revealed. Don’t count on their staff for pricing. Talk directly to the doctor and make sure that you get a signed statement from him as to what you will get for the money. (I doubt he will discuss it with you since he appeared to be uncomfortable with discussing it with me in person except 15 min before surgery) Insist upon a written contract since in my case if the office manager quits they may not honor the price or procedures that were discussed. If they can change the price and procedures included on the day of the operation as they did with me you should take that into consideration before having Lasik of Nevada do your surgery. You should be able to trust your doctor and their staff to be competent to give you a price, procedure for that price, and have it be exactly the same on the day of surgery. I have lost my faith in both Dr. Rothman and the staff of Lasik of Nevada. Let the buyer beware.
Mike, Kim, and Holly Heideman Las Vegas, and Austin Texas
On Monday I intend to submit this to the local newspaper and include it on Craigslist, medical blogs, lasik blogs, and to the general internet. This has caused my family a lot of grief………..I have tried to represent it just as it has happened to the best of my ability. My daughter will be writing an open letter of her own to Lasik of Nevada. My younger daughter is a nurse practitioner in Las Vegas. News travels fast among Health professionals.
The key to any successful procedure is patient expectation. As long as patient expectations are reasonable, and the surgeon has properly articulated the risks, and outcomes, LASIK surgery is indeed a very good option for permanent vision correction.
Hey! I came across your site today and thought that our sites would be perfect for a blogroll link exchange.
You can find my site here:
http://www.coloradolasiksurgeryguide.com
I update it often and will continue to do so. Please let me know if you’re interested! You can contact me at court@courtneytuttle.com.
This is a very informative blog. You have a lot of good information here. I’ve noticed the same thing that you wrote in your post above–it looks like lasik costs are stabilizing at around $1,500 to $1,800. Somewhere right around there, depending on where you get the procedure done. If you do it in Beverly Hills, then the sky is the limit in terms of what they may charge. But again, it depends on where you go.
If you want to do a link exchange let me know. Leave a comment at my site: http://losangeleslasiksurgeryguide.com/
I think I could bring you some good traffic and your site would be a good resource for my readers.
First of all I will tell you that there are a lot of true horror stories out there and most of them are the result of incompetence on the part of the doctor performing the LASIK. I, for one, and quite thankfully, am not one of those stories. Patrick’s story above is very sad and I am glad he names the doctor and the place where he had the procedure done. In fairness, I know someone who used Lasik Plus in Atlanta with great sucess.
I had mine done at Emory Vision in Atlanta by Dr J. Bradley Randleman. I am quite satisfied so far (it’s only been 24 hours). I paid a lot of money by comparison to others (about $4200 for both eyes). I don’t understand how or why anyone in their right mind would entertain a discount Lasik procedure.
The key is research. If you do your homework (I spent a year comparing what info I could find (primarily via Google) on every MD (searching their name in “quotes”) in my area to see who if anyone, god a bad write up.
Some words of advice. If your prescription is not somewhat strong (-2.00 or higher) the benefit probably does not outweigh the risks. Wikipedia Lasik and read it thoroughly. Remember that there is a 5% dissatisfaction rate (overall) and that probably is the result of the poor performance of a minority of the MD’s who do Lasik. There are lots of websites out there that are not affiliated with a particular doctor or chain and those will provide the most valuable info. Avoid discount doctors. You can no more afford cheap Lasik. If they advertise on the radio or in the newspaper (or elsewhere), they are probably not getting enough word of mouth recommendations to stay in business. And please, make sure the place you use calibrates their laser after every patient.
Anyway, my results (previously -6.00) are astounding. My first follow up (< 24 hrs later) was 20/20 using a blade & allegretto wave laser. I have some halo’s and slight starbursts but that (hopefully) will pass - but even if it does not, it’s not all that bad. To all who choose to have Lasik, best of luck.
I am so glad I found this blog!
My husband and I are leaving on Sept. 30th to backpack to various countries for a year or so.
We both where glasses and contact lenses. At this point our prescriptions have continued to change, it’s not the right time for either of us to undergo the surgery yet. Some day!
We are currently trying to sort out what type of lenses, etc. we should bring. Please visit http://www.nomadbackpackers.com and read my entry on “How will we see the world?” and leave a comment.
We are trying to figure out what we should do, and we would appreciate any advice!
Thanks,
Natalie
I agree with Lasik Columbus… your eyes are definitely not something to skimp on.
Of course there are differences in prices from one clinic to another. I’ve noticed that the prices are different not because of a more or less experienced doctor but according to the costs the clinic has. If a clinic spends more on advertising they are likely to charge more as well.
Seems like more and more people are trying Lasik Eye Surgery. Question though, is this really safe? I mean, I’m not so much of a risk taker so I would appreciate getting feedbacks from those who have really undergone the procedure.
I must say, this is a nice post.