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The Federal Trade Commission is trying to fight a practice that could increase claim costs at employer-sponsored vision care plans: moves by optometrists and other eye doctors to hide patients' prescriptions.
The federal Eyeglass Rule and Contact Lens Rule require eye doctors to give all patients who need corrective eyewear free copies of their prescriptions whenever the doctors test the patients' vision.
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The rule is supposed to increase competition and lower prices in the eyewear market, by giving patients the ability to buy eyeglasses and contact lenses from any provider.
But "consumers continue to report difficulty getting their prescriptions," FTC officials reported earlier this month.
The FTC's advertising practices division responded by sending warning letters about prescription access to 37 contact lens providers.
The names of the providers were not immediately available.
The FTC also sent a letter to Spectrum Vision Partners of Garden City, N.Y., to tell it that the FTC has closed an Eyeglass Rule and Contact Lens Rule investigation and expects Spectrum to stay in compliance with the rules.
The backdrop: The FTC's action is the latest sign that the vision care market is facing many of the same concerns about competition and cost as the general medical care market and the prescription drug market.
Just as pharmacies are fighting to rein in pharmacy benefit managers in state legislatures and Congress, vision care providers are fighting to rein in vision benefit managers.
Related: Why are optometrists squinting at vision care plans?
Congress is considering a bill that could impose restrictions on vision benefit managers' ability to control where patients get their lenses and eyeglass frames.
What it means: Employers and benefits managers may oppose vision benefits management practices that end up reducing the supply of vision care products and services and increasing the patients' and vision care plans costs'.
But employers and benefit managers also have a stake in fighting practices that protect inefficient providers and providers with especially high profit margins.
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Allison Bell
Allison Bell, a senior reporter at ThinkAdvisor and BenefitsPRO, previously was an associate editor at National Underwriter Life & Health. She has a bachelor's degree in economics from Washington University in St. Louis and a master's degree in journalism from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. She can be reached through X at @Think_Allison.
