2009 AOA Congressional Advocacy Report
By Tracie Farone King, O.D.
AOA Key-person Coordinator

The AOA Congressional Advocacy Conference set out a new goal for 2009 to have contact with every single legislator's office on Capitol Hill, and Maryland Optometrists met the challenge!

Issues at the forefront:

NON-DISCRIMINATION OF PROVIDERS: Our primary goal was to help educate our Congressional Legislators on health care issues relating to eye care and access to this care. As all of you know health care reform is a really hot topic on Capitol Hill, and our main message to our legislators was to ensure that all legislation coming forward has nondiscrimination language. This nondiscrimination language will preserve patient access to care by preventing insurance companies from excluding entire classes of providers ie: "optometry" from participating with insurance plans.

HR2697: Optometric equity in Medicaid Act: Optometrists are currently defined as physicians under Medicare. However, under Medicaid optometry is excluded from this definition of physician. This omission prevents Medicaid patients the access to medical eye care from an optometrist that is permitted under Medicare.

HR1884: Include optometry in the providers permitted to apply for the National Health Service Corps (NHSC). Inclusion of optometry in the NHSC will expand access to eye care in underserved community health centers. This program allows participants loan forgiveness of up to $25,000 per year up to a maximum of two years or $50,000.

S.259: The vision care for kids act would authorize $61 million for a Federal grant program to bolster children's vision and learning programs in the states. This would bridge the gap for uninsured children not covered by Medicaid programs to have the access to eye care they need. The house bill HR 577 was passed by the house on March 31, 2009 and all of our Maryland congressmen voted in favor of this bill.

I would like to extend a personal thank you to all of our Congressional key-persons, and optometrist constituents who attended our meetings on the hill.

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