Maryland Optometric Association News - Congress Rejects 1-800 Contacts' Bill and Attacks on Optometry

Congress Rejects 1-800 Contacts' Bill
and Attacks on Optometry
Whitfield, Allen and Pryor to Lead Crackdown on Unscrupulous Internet Contact Lens Sellers in 2007

In a significant victory in Washington, DC for ODs across the country and their patients, Congress has rejected a special interest contact lens sales and distribution provision backed by a two-year, $2.2 million anti-optometry lobbying campaign by 1-800 Contacts, Inc., an online contact lens sales company warned last year by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission about non-compliance with the prescription verification safeguards included in the 2003 Fairness to Contact Lens Consumers Act (FCLCA).

Optometry's victory on Capitol Hill follows successful efforts to defeat
similar contact lens "channels of distribution" bills in eight states
earlier in the year. In attempting to advance their legislation, 1-800
Contacts executives and lobbyists repeatedly attacked the prescribing
decisions and conduct of doctors of optometry.

The AOA actively countered this misinformation, and Members of Congress listened. Rejection of 1-800 Contacts bill, among the last acts of this week's final post-election "lame duck" sessions for the U.S, Senate and House of Representatives, comes after a sustained grassroots effort by all of optometry to ensure that a crack down on unscrupulous Internet contact lens sellers would be the top priority for revisions to the FCLCA.

In announcing this action and Congress's final adjournment for the year, the AOA Washington Office team extends special recognition to the AOA Board of Trustees and Dr. Mike Jones, volunteers in the AOA Advocacy Group, Keypersons and grassroots activists, AOA-PAC contributors and the leadership and staff of state optometric associations from coast-to-coast, all of whom responded to an optometry-wide call-to-arms on this issue.

In September, shortly after a Congressional hearing that successfully
focused national attention on the deficient prescription verification
practices of the Internet contact lens sales industry, Reps. Ed Whitfield
(R-KY) and Tom Allen (D-ME) introduced the AOA-backed Contact Lens Consumer Health Protection Act. The Whitfield-Allen bill, which will be
re-introduced when the new Congress meets in January, seeks to strengthen patient safety protections under the FCLCA by preventing Internet sellers from using automated telephone "robo-calls" to contact optometric offices, allowing ODs to respond to verification requests by their choice of fax, e-mail or phone call from a live operator and ensuring that each Internet seller must maintain a toll-free patient safety phone and fax hotline. The AOA is working with Senator Mark Pryor (D-AR) on a prescription verification bill to be introduced in the Senate in early 2007.