AST (and DRG) had their improvements pushed to 7.0 PLD are getting theirs in 6.3

[Archwizard]

Optimizing damage and optimizing healing is the same thing.

No, it isn't. And never will be.

That's like saying mastering being a gunslinging police officer and mastering being a surgeon treating gunshot victims is "the same thing".

That's a flawed analogy, least of which because neither one of those two has the overlap to fulfill the role demanded by the game. Gunslingers are not expected to render first aid while shooting, nor are surgeons expected to shoot while performing surgeries (and in fact take an oath to do no harm).

Optimized healing is the most efficient use of your healing (and mitigation) tools, to minimize the amount of additional healing required for maximum group uptime. (Any definition that proposes "maximizing healing" invites overhealing, which is suboptimal by definition.)
Optimized damage is the most efficient use of your damage-dealing tools to maximize the amount of damage you personally deal.

Optimizing raid healing, consequently, optimizes personal damage: By minimizing GCDs spent on healing, you are maximizing time for damage output.
Simultaneously, optimized raid damage requires optimizing personal healing: Maximum damage is only achieved when the entire group's downtime (ie death), as well as periods of reduced output (like Weakness debuffs), are reduced to zero.
And of course, maximizing your damage output is a form of damage mitigation, as it reduces the periods in which the party is taking damage that needs to be healed.

For any given group composition, the two are intrinsically linked -- of course, the bulk of healing optimization falls onto the healer's shoulders, rather than any other role, due to the tools at their disposal being more numerous and powerful than any other job's, while their GCD heals come at the lowest damage cost.
However! This is also why it's a tank's responsibility to use their mitigation tools, and why DPS are given tools to assist in personal healing and raidwide mitigation, in order to assist healers in minimizing raid downtime while continuing to deal damage.

So yes, for a healer, optimized damage is optimized healing and vice versa.