It sounds wonderfully convenient; make one appointment, get a test for your eyes and then a prescription. It’s the whole benefit to ‘one stop shopping’ and LensCrafters, Eye Care Centers of America and others have made getting glasses pretty convenient.
Regardless, California said that is illegal because it is health care. The California Medical Association doesn’t think elected officials should be making that decision and filed a lawsuit. The courts agreed, arguing under the nebulous Commerce clause of the Constitution that California had no ability to limit them. But now that has been overturned.
This arcane bit of wizardry is why health care is screwed in America and our only solution is to make it worse. You see, optometrists and ophthalmologists are considered ‘health care providers’ whereas opticians, who fill prescriptions and sell glasses, are not. How then does Kaiser have both doctors and pharmacies in its buildings? They are not outside California. It is basically state protectionism, but it prevents consumers from being able to afford health care because the state creates a de facto monopoly.
Obviously, if health care were made interstate, there would be no health care reform needed. Is your USAA car insurance too expensive? Go to Geico. But that is not allowed in California. Plaintiffs had argued this was unfair restriction of trade – the Commerce clause is basically the Smurf of law, it can transform into just about anything – but the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals declared that they were not violating the Commerce clause by discriminating against out-of-state companies.
Weird? Counter-intuitive? Sure, but that is not the problem, sometimes the letter of the law will in exceptional instances lead to counter-intuitive decisions. Attorneys for President Obama’s DEA defended agents who held a gun to a sleeping 11-year-old girl’s head but the appeals court could only find that it caused “intentional infliction of emotional distress” and not that it was batshit crazy, like you or I would find. They were looking for a dangerous drug dealer.
But the 9th gets it wrong a lot more than it gets it right. As I have written before, that is why they lead the country in overturned verdicts, with 19 of the 26 decisions examined last year reversed or vacated by the Supreme Court. 12 of those were unanimous, so even the ‘liberal’ justices thought they were bonkers. One famous local example; a Sacramento rapist raped a 72-year-old woman. It was clear, he was convicted. The 9th overturned the verdict because they felt like the jury selection process was ‘racially biased’ – something both prosecution and defense do. The Supreme Court called it “as inexplicable as it is unexplained” when overruling them and putting the criminal back in jail.
This ruling is not as crazy, it is not putting a rapist back on the street, but it isn’t great law either.