The Cost of Glasses

I've worn glasses since second or third grade, I think.  After I got my first pair I remember the revelation it was to see leaves and twigs on trees rather than a green blur. 

Now glasses are a technological marvel so obviously they are and should be relatively costly.  I think my last pair, with all the coatings and stuff were three or four hundred dollars.  But it's my eyesight, so I paid.

So I'm flabbergasted by this Vox piece drawing from an LATimes article.

"This week, the Los Angeles Times spoke with two former executives of LensCrafters: Charles Dahan and E. Dean Butler, who founded LensCrafters in 1983. Both admitted that today, glasses are marked up nearly 1,000 percent.
“You can get amazingly good frames, with a Warby Parker level of quality, for $4 to $8,” said Butler. “For $15, you can get designer-quality frames, like what you’d get from Prada.”

They attribute the high prices to having one big company which controls the industry.