Moretsky Cassidy Lasik Vision Correction Dr. Sanford L. Moretsky, Richard Sexual Assault, Elder Abuse, Deceptive Practices Mesa Arizona

It’s a rare occasion when you visit a supposedly professional medical establishment and not only are you verbally abused by the lead doctor because he refuses to do his own job, but you are also sexually harassed and molested by a technician all in the same day. To sum it up, this was my general experience at the Moretsky Cassidy Lasik Vision Correction Center at 160 W University Dr in Mesa, Arizona.

The lead doctor in question was none other than Dr. Sanford L. Moretsky himself and the technician I am speaking of, goes by the name of Richard, though I am not aware at this time of this last name. The visit started out normally enough, we came into the appointment on time at 9 am on 07/28/2015, where I proceeded to help my elderly 80 year old father fill out paperwork.

The reason I am with my father is his vision is failing because of cataracts and he cannot fill out medical forms on his own anymore. I was there with him only as a helper. The eye appointment was for my father only. My father is in need of cataract surgery and was looking to get a referral letter by Dr. Cassidy for toric lenses. My father is also a Korean 100% Disabled War Rated Vet, the VA will only pay for these specific lenses if an eye surgeon will write a recommendation letter for him. Otherwise, my father can only receive lower quality standard lenses, which don’t fully correct his vision problems.

The problems started when we were told the total examination was 3 hours long. My father had already been to the VA clinic for an exam and he didn’t want to go through another one. He had specifically come there for a recommendation letter for the toric surgery and he wanted to know if he would receive such a letter if he subjected himself to the long exam. This was when we first met Richard the technician; a short stocky man with deep brown skin and a very obviously broken nose. Richard assured us that if my father went through with the exam, he would most definitely receive a recommendation letter from Dr. Moretsky at the end of the visit.

So we proceeded to go through with the exam and this is where things started to go further downhill. While I will admit that Richard seemed like a very kind person at first, his questions about personal life completely through me off. I followed my father and Richard, as went through the various stations of equipment in the eye clinic, so Richard could collect he proper readings on my father’s eyes for Dr. Moretsky.

As we were doing this, he started asking me about my personal life. He wanted to know how many children I had. I looked at him oddly and said I did not have children. His response to this was I was a “diamond in the rough.” He was so sick of single mothers that had 3 to 4 kids each and demanded that he “support” them.  

I thought it would end there and he was just fooling around, but then he just persisted. He wanted to know about the tattoo on my back. He began to explain to me how he was planning to get his own tattoos very shortly and he would be getting this tattoo together with the 4 roommates he lived with. He wanted to know if I had a boyfriend. He gave me a complete history of his past girlfriends and how women were constantly lying to him to get him to pay their bills. This story varied between his lying girlfriends and the supposedly “lasting” relationship of 11 years, where his wife had died of cancer unexpectedly.

I never asked for any of this information, but it kept up none the less.  During the visit, he asked me to marry him 5 to 6 times and that he would make the best partner ever. He kept on saying, if you don’t have a boyfriend in 2 years; I will definitely marry you and give you children. He wanted to know how attractive I thought he was. I lied to him and said he looked good. He was disgusting to look at, if you really wanted my honest opinion.

For the record, yes this was creepy and I wanted it to stop as soon as it started, but I was hoping that if I remained polite, Dr. Moretsky would write us a letter, which Richard kept on promising was coming. When Dr. Moretsky finally did arrive and did his examination on my father, he agreed to write the letter and said he would recommend the toric lenses. He did express the VA was unlikely to pay for it, but he would be happy to give us a letter anyway.

Finally, my father and myself were moved to the part of the clinic where surgery was scheduled. Sometime between Dr. Moretsky’s examination and the move to the other side of the clinic, my father briefly went out of the room a couple of times. During this time, Richard decided this would be a good time to try to touch one of my breasts. However, he only got as far as my shoulder and back since I kept on moving away from him whenever he tried. This occurred a total of 2 to 3 times during the entire clinic visit.

When we were sat down in the surgery schedule waiting room, we were asked by Richard if we would like to wait for the letter from Dr. Moretsky for the toric lenses surgery or simply schedule the surgery immediately for the standard lenses, since it was unknown if the VA would pay for the higher quality surgery. My father said he rather wait and have the letter. Then out of nowhere, Richard tells us that he might be able to schedule the toric surgery immediately. So he goes in the back to make some phone calls, but who knows what he was really doing. He comes back about 10 minutes later, and tells us no, we still need the letter. We are then led by Richard to the “finance department” of the clinic.

This is where we are introduced to a woman named Wendy, a sagging, heavy set, older woman who did not look too happy with how her life turned out. It seems Wendy’s one and only job function is to write the price of surgery on a sticky note and hand it to the bewildered patient in her office. When Wendy handed my father a sticky note with, by the way, the completely incorrect price of the toric surgery, he asked where his letter from the doctor was. Wendy became extremely irate at this question and said it was not her job to write letters for “insurance companies”. My father explained the Veterans Administration was not an insurance company. Wendy ignores this and keeps on explaining it’s not her job to write letters for anyone.

When my father keeps on demanding the letter from her, she leaves the office and comes back with a “standard form.” This form only has two pieces of information on it, the price of the standard lenses and the price of the toric lenses. My father said this was no good for the VA, he needed an actual written letter from the doctor stating why he needed toric lenses over standard. Wendy kept on insisting this was good enough and she knew all about how the VA accepted letters, though she had just claimed five minutes ago she never writes letters for anyone.

We both gave up talking to Wendy then and left Wendy’s office, not with our promised letter, but with a price sheet of how much the clinic’s different surgeries cost. We then were taken back by Wendy to the main office at the clinic, where Richard happened to be lounging in one of the waiting room chairs.

Now, I have never seen an eye tech in a professional setting relaxing in the waiting room like this in my entire life. Though after what I had just been through, I knew this clinic was the opposite of the definition of professional in any capacity whatsoever. Wendy quickly leaves the main office then and says we can explain our issues to Richard.  Richard comes up to us and asks how our visit with Wendy went. This was not a pleasant conversation. His answer to what happened and how we would not be receiving our promised letter was “sorry.” Yeah, that really makes up for the 3+ hours of torment of carrot dangling and molestation, we just suffered in this pathetic excuse for an eye clinic.

You would think this would be the end of the story, they lied and we leave, but it gets better. Much better. Dr. Moretsky appears from the back rooms and proceeds to start screaming at my elderly father that it’s pointless to write a letter, because the VA hardly ever approves the toric procedure anyway. This is when I step in between my father and the doctor. I tell him to his face that we know the chance is slim, but we were promised a letter, so you should keep your word and write us one. We don’t want a guarantee the surgery will be approved, just a referral letter. He finally relents and says he will write the letter in a “few days”. Remember, we were promised this letter at the end of the examination, not days from the visit time. I know this was a complete lie on the doctor’s part and there will be no letter, so we leave the clinic, feeling absolutely gutted.

Please judge for yourself whether you want a doctor, who lies to and verbally abuses the elderly, keeps molesting creeps in his office as techs, and ignores incompetent staff, as the person that you are going to go under the knife with for your vision. As a personal recommendation from my own experience, go somewhere else, anywhere is better than this sewage pit that happens to be called an eye clinic.