Dear Majority Leader Thune, Minority Leader Schumer, Chairman Cruz, Ranking Member Cantwell, and distinguished senators of the 119th Congress,

The Coalition for Contact Lens Consumer Choice is a bipartisan coalition of consumer and taxpayer-focused groups, companies that compete in the contact lens marketplace, and think tanks that believe in competition and choice. For the past nine years, we have stood united as the voice for the 50 million Americans who wear contact lenses in this country, and we urge you, the leaders of the US Senate, to stand united against legislation moving in the House that undermines and undercuts the rights of contact lens consumers and taxpayers.

H.R. 4282, legislation introduced in the House in July of this year, would increase costs for contact lens consumers and reduce competition in the contact lens market. Sponsored by Congressman Morgan Griffith (R-VA-9), H.R. 4282, the so-called “Contact Lens Prescription Modernization Act”, has been introduced in every recent Congress as part of an orchestrated decades-long attempt to weaken the Fairness to Contact Lens Consumers Act (FCLCA) and the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) updated Contact Lens Rule (CLR) issued unanimously in 2020.

The FCLCA was enacted in 2004 with strong bipartisan support to promote competition and consumer choice in a marketplace uniquely saddled with state laws that protected optometrists’ ability to sell the products they prescribe. Thanks to the FCLCA, consumers can shop for contact lenses wherever and whenever they choose — at their optometrist’s office, local big box store, neighborhood pharmacy, online vendors, over the phone, or through an app. This array of options also yields savings for taxpayers, who help underwrite government employee insurance and other programs providing some form of vision care benefit. Consumers have a wide variety of choices when buying contact lenses, but they need their prescription to take advantage of this competitive marketplace by comparison shopping. H.R. 4282 seeks to end the most accurate, cost-effective, and efficient prescription verification option created within the FCLCA by banning automated phone prescription verification. It is merely a protectionist ploy to more deeply entrench optometrists’ ability to sell what they prescribe and upset the carefully balanced consumer and safety protections set out in the FCLCA.

The fact is the optometric industry and its trade association, the American Optometric Association, have the power to end automated phone prescription verification on their own, without Congressional action. They could eliminate the need for the automated system by simply releasing a copy of a customer’s contact lens prescription after each visit, which they are legally mandated to do. However, complaints about prescribers not giving patients their prescription information continue, and the FTC has reprimanded contact lens prescribers for non-FCLCA compliance as recently as June of this year.

Instead of passing this flawed bill, perhaps Congress should explore ways that will encourage the public and private sectors to educate contact lens consumers and to warn them about bad actors who may have been denying Americans the right to their own contact lens prescription. If H.R. 4282 is passed by Congress, contact lens prices would increase, and consumer choice would diminish. Taxpayers may be forced to pay more for vision care. We need your help to stop this bill in its tracks. On behalf of the millions of Americans who wear contact lenses in this country, please oppose HR. 4282.

Sincerely,

The Coalition for Contact Lens Consumer Choice