{"id":34787,"date":"2016-09-29T08:58:24","date_gmt":"2016-09-29T15:58:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nevadanewsandviews.com\/?p=34787"},"modified":"2016-09-29T08:59:11","modified_gmt":"2016-09-29T15:59:11","slug":"congress-wants-to-protect-contact-lenses-from-free-market-competition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nevadanewsandviews.com\/congress-wants-to-protect-contact-lenses-from-free-market-competition\/","title":{"rendered":"Congress wants to \u201cProtect\u201d Contact Lenses from Free Market Competition"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"a\"<\/a><\/p>\n

(Beth Johnson | Libertarian Republic)<\/strong><\/em> –\u00a0Once upon a time, contacts lens manufacturer Johnson & Johnson was on top of the world. To some extent, it still is \u2014 it still produces nearly 40 percent of the world\u2019s contact lenses and makes a ton of money each year. But this is nothing compared to the company\u2019s heyday, when it could price gouge its products and get away with it.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately for the nation\u2019s 41 million contact lens users, the good old days of exploiting contact lens customers might be coming back if the new Contact Lens Consumer Health Protection Act is passed into law. This legislation will strip consumers of their right to choose in an effort to further the financial interests of the billion-dollar medical lobby.<\/p>\n

Conservatives Open the Contact Lens Market<\/strong><\/p>\n

Before 2003, eye doctors had a virtual monopoly over the sale of contacts. They were not obligated to give patients a copy of their prescriptions, so they could more or less control where consumers purchased their lenses. This normally meant directly from their offices at exorbitant prices. It was a win-win for the medical lobby \u2014 manufacturers like Johnson & Johnson made more money off the lenses, while doctors\u2019 offices profited greatly from the inflated retail costs.<\/p>\n

All was well and good for eye doctors\u2019 favored lens manufacturers, but then the Republican-controlled Congress had enough. Recognizing that the market was stifled, the body passed legislation to restore free market competition back to the industry. Their bill, The Fairness in Contact Lens Consumers Act (FCLCA), leveled the playing field by enforcing consumer rights. It required that doctors provide prescriptions on demand so that consumers could shop anywhere they wanted for contacts. Gone were the days that doctors could delay third-party sales for indefinite amounts of time \u2014 they now had just an 8-hour window to ask questions or express concerns in order to stop prospective sales.<\/p>\n

As a result of these free market reforms, a whole new secreted industry sprouted up. Retail stores like Walmart, as well as a wide array of online sellers, entered the market. The slaying of the medical lobby\u2019s monopoly caused prices for contacts to drop immediately. Now, over 41 million Americans can afford to purchase more than $7 billion worth of contact lens every year from optometrists, retail stores, and online sellers.<\/p>\n

Johnson & Johnson\u2019s Plan to Re-Monopolize the Industry<\/strong><\/p>\n

While FCLCA was a great deal for American families, it didn\u2019t fit the desires of crony lens manufacturers like Johnson & Johnson, which wanted to continue captivating the market through the force of government. In recent months, the company has conspired with the American Optometric Association (AOA) to push these new retail and online vendors out of the market.<\/p>\n

Representatives from Johnson & Johnson helped draft The Contact Lens Consumer Health Protection Act (CLCHPA), a new Senate bill which will reverse Congress\u2019 free market reforms by restoring optometrists\u2019 monopoly over the eye industry.<\/p>\n

CLCHPA will require that all contact lens sellers provide methods of communications like fax numbers and landline numbers \u2014 points of contact which many any online vendors don\u2019t have. Worse is that doctors will regain their indefinite approval cushion for third-party orders. This means that eye doctors will essentially be permitted to block the sale of lenses from any vendors they don\u2019t like \u2014 by refusing to ever give a yes or no answer on transactions, they will essentially be pocket-vetoing the processing orders.<\/p>\n

Health Concerns Debunked<\/strong><\/p>\n

The crony groups like Johnson & Johnson and the American Academy of Ophthalmology that pushed for the bill claim that this bill was introduced in the name of consumer safety. They allege that keratitis, an inflammation of the cornea, occurs more from online orders.<\/p>\n

Of course, none of the empirical or academic data matches up with their assertions. These groups are ignoring the fact that all contact lens consumers \u2014 regardless of whether they buy from the doctor\u2019s office or online \u2014 still need to provide up-to-date prescriptions to receive lenses.<\/p>\n

In a letter written to the CLCHPA\u2019s authors, Dr. Paul B. Donzis, a professor of ophthalmology at UCLA, made this point abundantly clear. \u201cBased on\u2026authoritative scientific articles, it appears that online sales of contact lenses have not contributed to any increase in the incidence of contact lens related [injury],\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

And, as you would expect, all of the data points in favor of the doctor\u2019s opinion and not those of the greedy contact lens manufacturers. For example, a prominent 20-year epidemiologic study of contact lens related-keratitis published in 2007 by the medical journal Eye & Contact Lens found that there has been no increase in the incidence of microbial keratitis since the advent of online sales.<\/p>\n

Congress Must Stop the CLCHPA<\/strong><\/p>\n

What really poses the risk of keratitis is not third party vendors, but the ignorant advocates of this bill, which are indirectly encouraging the extended use of contact lenses.<\/p>\n

The number one cause of keratitis is consumers\u2019 failure to replace contacts as scheduled. Well, what do you think will happen if Johnson & Johnson\u2019s Contact Lens Consumer Health Protection Act goes into effect? As the preferred contact lens vendors\u2019 market dominance is restored and the price of contacts rises to pre-2003 levels, consumers will start replacing their contacts less and less frequently in order to cut costs. It\u2019s human nature, and it will happen.<\/p>\n

If Congress truly cares about the health of contacts lens users, it will block CLCHPA from reaching the Senate floor, not entertain the provisions of a corporate, protectionist bill that was founded on false premises and fear-mongering.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Beth Johnson | Libertarian Republic) –\u00a0Once upon a time, contacts lens manufacturer Johnson & Johnson was on top of the world. To some extent, it still is \u2014 it still produces nearly 40 percent of the world\u2019s contact lenses and makes a ton of money each year. But this is nothing compared to the company\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":34788,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/nevadanewsandviews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34787"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/nevadanewsandviews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/nevadanewsandviews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nevadanewsandviews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nevadanewsandviews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34787"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/nevadanewsandviews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34787\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34791,"href":"http:\/\/nevadanewsandviews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34787\/revisions\/34791"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nevadanewsandviews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34788"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nevadanewsandviews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nevadanewsandviews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nevadanewsandviews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}