News flash: your eye doctor is likely rigging the prices of your contact lenses.
If you use contact lenses to correct your vision, your optometrist may or may not have been jacking up the price of your lenses by not following the consumer protection measures on the books.
While the medical lobby’s cohorts in Congress are looking to pass protectionist legislation to captivate the market before the holiday recess, the Federal Trade Commission is stepping in to help the consumer.
Due to the 2004 Fairness in Contact Lens Consumers Act (FCLCA), doctors are mandated to give patients copies of their prescriptions, no questions asked. This legislation was enacted to stop doctors who withheld prescriptions with the intent of forcing consumers to purchase lenses directly from their offices at inflated prices.
Over the past 12 years, many doctors have refused to follow this law. For that reason, the FTC recently unveiled a proposal that would require prescribers to comply with the rule. They began mandating that the doctor collects a signed form from each patient verifying that they received a copy of their prescription.
Critics of regulation need not be nervous -- the new proposal would not change anything new. Across the field of medicine and practice, doctors are required to keep records. The FTC proposal would do exactly that, but would merely clarify the law and make sure that eye doctors follow the rules that all other doctors abide by, evening the playing field.
There needs to be confidence in the free market, which will provide cheap and safe contact lenses if it’s given a chance.
Everyone must be warned of the cogs that are turning in the minds and actions of crony members of Congress and lobbyists backed by the largest prescribers and contact lens companies. Currently, these special interests are aiming to repeal the 2004 contact lens free market reform and replace it with their own amended mandates.
Johnson & Johnson’s new proposed Senate bill, the Contact Lens Consumer Health Protection Act (CLCHPA), is an attempt to restore the monopoly that had existed before 2004 by squeezing third party vendors out of the marketplace. If passed, the bill will require that contact lens sellers provide methods of communications like fax numbers and landline numbers, which most online vendors don’t have. Additionally, it would give doctors the power to block the sale of perfectly fine lenses from third party vendors by just refusing to respond to their transaction requests.
Consumers should have the power to choose how and where they purchase any good. Except this is no ordinary good -- to 41 million Americans, contact lenses are essential products that are needed to function in their day-to-day activities.
Imagine if someone had the power to charge disproportionately high prices like food and water because government occupational licensing laws stymied competing sellers. That would be blatantly wrong. The same holds true with contact lenses.
To paint doctors as greedy is the wrong solution. Rather, doctors are inclined to utilize practices that best facilitate immediate consumer utility and guarantee a paycheck. Just think that physicians are more inclined to be attracted to customers who plan to purchase contact lenses through their general health insurance. The money frequently doesn’t come from the consumer's pocket, but originates from the American taxpayers. It is no surprise that someone with health insurance is spending-averse when they don’t even see the money that they are spending.
But those customers that purchase lenses through general and publicly funded health care plans are few. The vast majority of buyers purchase contact lenses out of pocket, most of the time, reluctantly.
Doctors are morally compelled to do what is in the best interests of their patients. If that means to allow customers to make educated decisions and purchase more affordable lenses, then let them do it.
The idea that contact lenses are dangerous and should be increasingly regulated is an old idea that is factually baseless and scientifically disproven. Contact lenses, just like glasses, vegetables, and iPhones, should exist in a field where competition can prosper. American consumers must come first.
The FTC proposal, although not the solution, is the first step towards it. Crony politicians and lobbyists cannot pass the Senate bill to realign the 2004 FCLCA. Americans have the liberty to buy products wherever they want. Contact wearers should be no exception to this rule because no one has the right to tell you what you can and cannot buy, especially when it involves whether or not you can see.