You can be either hammer...or anvil.Originally Posted by drk
You can be Twitter (2005); Facebook (2005); You Tube (2003); Google (1998) or Amazon (1995)
Or you can be Kodak; Blockbuster; Borders, etc.
It's your choice whether to change with the times.
B
If you wish to beat the on-liners, you have to convince the goverment, that the goverments are losing tax money...on-liners are creating un-employment which the goverment must then support. You have to give the goverment a proper reason to act......TAXES & MONEY.
Taxing online eyewear transaction does not change the game, IMHO. Besides, "medically-based" RX eyewear is currently exempt from taxation.
Perhaps this will change for a myriad of reasons.
B
That is not the tax I am speaking of!!! EXAMPLE: I open an on-line website dedicated to England selling eyeglasses. I rent an office and put in 10 toll free English telephone numbers. I hire three Brit ladies to answer the phones for qusetions (in the proper Brit accent). To the client it sounds like the business is based in England, so they order. The order is sent to the Orient where the eyeglasses are made and returned to the client, throught the same English office. The credit card is charged and the money leaves the contry going to the owner who lives in the Orient. THIS IS THE TAXATION THE GOVERMENT IS MISSING!!! The un-employment comes from the poor optical workers that are loosing their jobs,in Englansd, due to the on-liners.
OK! I see your point and agree!
B
yes, I'm older than you. However to you next point about managed care....you've not been around long enough to have practiced when managed care wasn't as prevalant so you knew what you were getting into. This isn't the 1960's, managed care is here to stay and has been during your entire career so don't go around touting they are taking something you could support without it. You were still high school during those days. Perhaps grade school. However you are old enough to have seen the market change in the last 20yrs. I hope your business has and continues to evolve. That's all VSP is doing. If you don't, you will die.
They are a a managed care company just like tons of others out there in this world. They aren't taking people off the market. Do you really think in today's market customers not able to take vision benefits through VSP would pay full retail through you? Did your private pay business BOOM during the 08-09 economic downturn as people lost benefits? I doubt it. My guess is you had a huge surge in VSP Claims at the end of year 08 as people used up what they had prior to losing them and likely again a big VSP January of 09.Seriously, if I could be convinced that VSP was for "private optometry", I could support it. However, the fact is that they kick butt by getting employers and employees to surrender pre-tax dollars year after year and take people "off the market" before I, or anyone else, can get to them. I can't compete. I have to join them, or perish.
Now we're in that cycle again, January for me, VSP Claims were up nearly 60% and how about you? I'm right in your backyard, so you had to have had a killer Dec and Jan this year? Good news is our Private pay was up too, but again, I've been around a while.
Look in the other markets around the world like Australia and Europe and tell me how OD's over there are doing. If VSP Goes away, I'm immediately going to invest in online optical and Lux because their business will boom. Customers have all the options in the world to pay you full boat and not take out VSP benefits but they choose not to.
So do you understand the business reasons why VSP is growing their business into materials? Ooops, that's a hint. It's also a thump because it's clear you haven't thought about it. Todd, I'll give you some information to think about.A chink in your argument's armor. This is evidence of a new, rogue mission. Kind of like them going outside the U.S. to do business. What, VSP is looking out for private practice optometry's interests in foreign countries? They didn't have to go "global" nor buy up large segments of the optical industry. They never needed to build labs, either. Oops! Did I really just juxtapose that? Oops! VSP's brands?
Why did Essilor buy up labs and grow their IDD Business? To control distribution. Why? To continue pushing 1,234 different lenses they produce. What else do they have if they don't have lenses?
What does Lux have that makes them so strong? Control over a very profitable frame business. Why would VSP Buy Marchon? To gain that very same profitability stream. ie....insurance isn't a money maker like materials. Why did Lux buy EyeMed? To serve as a funnel for patients into their retail store to buy frames. Make sense yet?
Why is VSP going Global? Marketshare and growth to keep pace and compete with who? Lux/EyeMed and to stay strong against Esslilor and others who are also overseas. Make sense still?
Why did VSP get into the lab business? To further complete the web of business, they can't not compete effectively in the market if they don't have all branches. Now the same goes for their own private lable products. Why do private label Todd? Cut out the middle man brands that end up passing on costs to you and the patient.
Do you really not follow the business model of this? Please tell me you just like playing dumb.
Really....show me a market without VSP that has a stronger Private Practice presence, one that OD's are far better off than ours in the United States and we'll have a cup of coffee at VEE. My Starbucks card anxiously awaits. Tap into your organizational contacts like I have and show me the results. We'll compare findings.A great summary statement on your part. This was VSP's original mission, as you seem well-aware. I'm thinking Optometry is to the point where we'd be doing better without them.
So you think VSP is the most powerful gorilla out there eh? Can you tell me the 8-10 or so much, much larger companies that control far more of this market? Again, let's see what you are able to find out and post back. You obviously haven't done the research or studied up on the market because I think I'm low when saying only 8-10 larger and more controlling companies than VSP.They're too successful and powerful. I think that's why the AOA (the gang that usually doesn't shoot straight, but is an indicator of optometry's relationship with vision care plans) was in an opposite camp from the NAVCP on Capitol Hill during the health care reform debates (which is a whole 'nother example of my much larger point, but let's not go there or Steve M.'s head will asplode.)
The AOA is lost IMO. They actually want to roll the dice on Healthcare reform and letting a gov't based system trump what we have today? Seriously? If that comes about you'll be retiring early, mark my words. You think VSP is difficult for you to live with? Welcome to Obama care will wake you up. No thanks....I've posted my thoughts and experience tells me you do not vote to side with letting Gov't control this aspect of our economy. Look up my posts as I don't want to repeat myself. Let's just leave it at the fact that I've yet to see any of them reply to my points. I must either scare them that much or they began to think about what I was saying.....and let's just say I doubt anyone is afraid of me when they are behind their keyboards and monitors. Thankfully it will all very likely get shot down once we get Obama out of office. Joke.....
Last edited by racethe1320; 01-31-2012 at 10:28 PM.
Todd? I'm not TC. My name's Jeff.
You clearly appreciate VSP's influence on the market.
I realize that VSP and EyeMed are stabilizing for optical care, in general, but it's a Faustian bargain because we've rolled over for them. We'll see how it plays out in the next ten years or so, but I think we'll see a bigger and bigger squeeze on small (puny) business. I'll be doing fine, as will many here on this board, but it's going to look ugly for the median OD. I think we're going to see the big players flex a lot of capital and optometry's a disorganized mess ripe for exploitation. We'll all be working for VSP clinics or Luxottica or WalMart or Essilor, in 20 years.
Something earth-shaking like the end of employer-based health care purchasing will set it off. Picture well-capitalized VSP, after losing their current business model of selling in the board rooms, setting up their own freestanding "clinics" (since they can't buy any chains as none left are worth buying). They can buy out practices in strategic locations, and make it very difficult to compete. They could place ODs from the glut of new grads and be completely vertical, as is Luxottica.
I began to appreciate the Luxottica strategy around 2004. It seems to have worked flawlessly. First, buy retail outlets. Second, buy Cole Vision to get their vision care contracts and give EyeMed some real testicles. Then sell their gimmicky plans as a different means of driving traffic than their head-sizer-calipers (or whatever they were). They undersell VSP by making it up on the "provider" side, and VSP can't do that.
VSP has to fight their fire with the same fire, so they think.
There is a solution out there, and I think I have it, and it rests in my back pocket like my collection of junk silver coins and food insurance for the day of reckoning.
Very good. I didn't think you were going to disappoint. Sorry about the Todd/Jeff thing.....I'm old and meant Jeff but typed Todd. FWIW, Todd is a friend of mine who is also an OD.
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