[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 76 (Tuesday, June 11, 2002)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5370-S5371]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

      By Mr. LEAHY (for himself and Mr. Schumer):
  S. 2609. A bill to require the Federal Trade Commission to promulgate 
a rule to establish requirements with respect to the release of 
prescriptions for contact lenses; to the Committee on Commerce, 
Science, and Transportation.
  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, the Contact Lens Prescription Release Act 
of 2002 will rectify a troubling anomaly in competition and health care 
law: Eye doctors have long been required to provide patients with the 
prescriptions for their eyeglasses, but not for contact lenses. This 
bill will require ophthalmologists and optometrists to release contact 
lens prescriptions to their patients, just as they have long been 
required to do for eyeglass wearers.
  Since 1973, when the Federal Trade Commission issued a regulation 
requiring the automatic release of eyeglass prescriptions, the millions 
of citizens who wear glasses have had access to,

[[Page S5371]]

and the use of, their own prescriptions. They have long been able to 
``shop around'' for the best provider of eyeglasses for themselves, but 
contact lens wearers are often forced to purchase their contacts from 
their eye doctors, because they have been denied possession of their 
own prescriptions.
  The contact lens industry was in its infancy in 1973, and thus was 
excluded from the FTC's regulation. Now that 35 million Americans wear 
contact lenses, the industry is profoundly different. Thirty years ago, 
it made sense that the FTC did not extend its rule to cover contact 
lenses, but now that so many patients wear contacts, it seems the time 
is ripe for the law to reflect this growing health care trend. In 
addition, because patients' prescriptions can be exclusively held by 
their doctors, anticompetitive behavior among some eye doctors has 
escalated, to the detriment of consumers and competition.
  In some instances, doctors can effectively force their patients to 
buy contact lenses from their doctors who can also require them to come 
in for eye exams before they receive replacement lenses, even if there 
is no change to the prescription. Patients must then pay for medical 
services they do not want, and cannot shop around for the best price or 
most convenient delivery service for their contact lens, like on-line 
ordering, or discount dealers. In fact, thirty-two State Attorneys 
General have recently settled an antitrust suit against the American 
Optometric Association and Johnson & Johnson, maker of ACUVUE 
disposable contact lenses, in which the attorneys general alleged that 
defendants conspired to force patients to buy their lenses only from 
eye doctors, and to eliminate competition from alternative distributors 
of contact lenses.
  The Contact Lens Prescription Release Act would require the FTC to 
amend its trade regulation rule on ophthalmic practice to require a 
contact lens prescriber to release to the patient, or her agent, a copy 
of the prescription, and it would make it an unfair practice for any 
contact lens supplier to represent that the lenses could be obtained 
without a valid prescription. This bill would put contact lens wearers 
in the same position as their bespectacled brethren: They could have 
control of their own medical information, and be able to choose the 
right supplier, from a more competitive marketplace of suppliers, for 
themselves.
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