Eye trouble 'complications' costing millions

The amount of medical redundancy sometimes staggers the experts -- as in, unnecessary procedures that cause complications that then need to be fixed. All of this is great for the medical industry's margins, but not for the patient of insurance companies.

A new study says that vision loss actually costs the U.S. Medicare program more than $2 billion a year. That in and of itself does not sound that strange. The strange thing, however, is that these costs are not for eye-related medical problems -- but for problems like depression and disability.

So, this is not really a medical redundancy issue after all -- but a problem that perhaps a little preventive maintenance could take care of. After all, patients need body healers and not body mechanics -- and that includes mental and physical ailments, right?