Letters | Glasses are not a luxury for the elderly: Hong Kong medical voucher scheme should see that

Restricting the use of vouchers on optometry services may put costlier but useful varifocal lenses out of the reach of less well-off elderly people

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The Hong Kong government has proposed to cap the use of health care vouchers at HK$2000 for optometry services across two years. Photo: K.Y. Cheng

Published: 9:00am, 30 Mar 2019Updated: 9:00am, 30 Mar 2019

I refer to the article on Professor Yeoh Eng-kiong’s view that the government health care voucher scheme for the elderly is in need of an overhaul, because it has failed to ease overcrowding at public hospitals and clinics (“Former Hong Kong health chief slams medical voucher scheme”, March 12).

It should come as no surprise that the scheme did not ease overcrowding, as the funds available to individuals under the scheme – HK$2,000 a year capped at HK$5,000 – are obviously insufficient to obtain treatment from the private sector, except for consultations with general practitioners for problems that do not require expensive investigations, such as X-rays and blood tests, and follow-up treatment. This is why the vast majority of the elderly have no practical alternative but to use public hospitals and clinics.

However, two of the aspects of the scheme that have been relatively successful in meeting the needs of the elderly are dental treatment and optometry – neither of which are easily available from the public system. We now learn that the government proposes to cap the permissible expenditure on optometry services at HK$2,000 across two years because of perceptions that the elderly are spending excessively on eye care, especially on glasses.

It appears there is a belief that the elderly are being persuaded by optometrists to purchase expensive branded glasses, as some of them are spending in excess of HK$3,000 on a pair.

Customers look at spectacles in a shop that accepts government health care vouchers for the elderly. Photo: K.Y. Cheng

From my own experience, this is not excessive. Not unusually for an elderly person, I require sight corrections for both reading and distance. I thus opted for varifocals. My glasses came at a total cost, inclusive of eye test, of just over HK$3,000. The frames themselves cost a modest HK$200 and are not expensive designer frames. These glasses have now served me well for four years.