WASHINGTON—The long running battle between contact lens makers and retailers escalated on Friday when U.S. Representatives Pete Olson (R-Texas) and Kathy Castor (D-Fla.) introduced a bill in the House that supporters said would make significant clarifications to the current process under which contact lens prescriptions are verified.

The bill, known as the Contact Lens Consumer Health Protection Act of 2016, is aligned with legislation introduced in the Senate earlier this year by Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) and Sen. John Boozman (R-Ariz.). The bills are supported by the Coalition for Patient Vision Care Safety, which consists of AdvaMed, Alcon, the American Optometric Association (AOA) Bausch + Lomb, CooperVision, Johnson and Johnson Vision Care and The Contact Lens Institute.

AOA, in a statement posted on its website Friday, said the proposed House legislation includes new patient safety requirements and “increased accountability for the Internet contact lens sales industry,” and that the bill is intended to “curb abuses of the Fairness to Contact Lens Consumers Act (FCLCA).”

Andrea P. Thau, OD, AOA president, said the association wanted to commend the two representatives “for their bipartisan leadership in making patient safety a top priority.” She added, “This bill will give contact lens wearers peace of mind, protecting them from dishonest online sellers whose unscrupulous tactics can cause patient harm and increase health care costs.”

In a separate statement, Johnson & Johnson Vision Care Inc. said it “applauds” the Coalition for Patient Vision Care Safety and the various other manufacturers and medical organizations “for their ongoing advocacy efforts that led to the bill’s introduction [in the House].”

The proposed legislation, according to AOA, would:
• Hold sellers accountable for illegal sales tactics and false claims, and make increased enforcement to safeguard public health a priority for the Federal Trade Commission.
• Establish a live patient-safety hotline allowing doctors to provide sellers with patient health information and ensuring that the doctor-patient relationship is respected.
• Ban use by internet sellers of disruptive automated “robocalls” into doctors’ offices as the mechanism for verifying patient prescription information, and allowing doctors to choose live phone calls or emails from sellers instead.
• Ensure contact lenses must be dispensed exactly as the prescription is written by the doctor.
• Direct the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to study the public health and health care cost impact of internet seller abuses.
• Increase fines to sellers to $40,000 per infraction.

“This bill not only ensures stronger safeguards for patients, but it also sends a message to sellers that illegal tactics and false claims that put patient health at risk will not be permitted,” Rep. Olson said. “I'm encouraged by the support for this bill and look forward to working with Representative Castor and Senator Cassidy toward passage on behalf of contact lens patients nationwide.”

On the opposite side of the issue are some leading national optical retailers, who moved earlier this year to launch their own coalition and advocacy campaign to press for their views about how deregulating the contact lens market should proceed. See VM story here.

The Coalition for Contact Lens Consumer Choice is spearheaded by retailers 1-800 Contacts, Costco and Lens.com. A post on the group’s website noted that the problem with the bill introduced in the House Friday begins with its “misleading” name. The post was authored by Morning Consult, which calls itself a “media and technology company at the intersection of politics, policy, Wall Street, and business strategy.

“The misleadingly named Contact Lens Consumer Health Protection Act … erodes carefully crafted laws that ensure consumers can buy contact lenses from wherever they choose,” the Morning Consult author noted. “Supporters claim that the legislation targets deceptive sales of contact lenses, yet it actually squeezes consumers to make it difficult, even impossible to purchase lenses from any non-optometrist third party.”

In addition, earlier this year the CL retailer 1-800 Contacts issued a statement reacting to the introduction of the Senate legislation. The retailed noted that it believes this proposed bill “would rewrite current law to undermine competition in the contact lens marketplace to increase profits for optometrists at the expense of consumers. The legislation would reduce choice, increase costs and jeopardize eye health.”