the reason they do not do a 'lens implant' on everyone instead of lasik, is that the lens implant takes away your eye's natural ability to focus close up. the natural lense whose shape can be changed by your eye muscles, is replaced by a plastic liense that cannot be reshaped, i.e. refocus up close, by your eye's muscles.
these are the same eye muscles that give out around mid age and people loose the ability to see close up.
so lasik is a better choice given the option - you fix the shape of the eye, and you see better at distances and you still have your natural lense to see up close.
lasik has made great strides - but if you search it out deeply, you will find it is not a sure thing. many people have very severe problems - can't see at night, can't go to a movie, have to have multiple pairs of glasses to use throughout the day because the pressures inside the eye causes a diff shape to the eye and this requires diff glasses, severe problems with light, and career ending headaches, problems reading.
make sure you have a good dr. do the research. it is not like buying a pair of shoes.
Yes and no. The main reason cataract surgery isn't done on everyone with refractive complains is that it is an invasive surgery. While refractive surgery is done to the front of the cornea, or at one of the layers of the cornea, cataract surgery is surgery that is actually in the anterior chamber of the eye. You have a much greater chance of complications (although very rare).
Refractive surgery deals with making the image clear on the retina, cataract surgery must be done when the image cannot be clear on the retina because of the cataract. These are two entirely different surgeries for different purposes.