Prevent Blindness Offers Assistance to Parents and Educators Regarding Healthy Eyesight for Children

Healthy eyesight can help improve a child’s chance at success in the classroom, so Prevent Blindness is asking parents to make an appointment for an eye exam for their children. In line, the association declared August as Children’s Eye Health and Safety Awareness month. The non-profit group has a variety of resources to help put children on the path to a lifetime of healthy vision:

• PreventBlindness.org includes free information on a variety of children’s eye health topics including amblyopia (lazy eye), strabismus (crossed eyes), UV-protection and sports safety.
• Through its National Center for Children’s Vision and Eye Health (NCCVEH), PB offers the online School Requirements for Children's Visionmap that provides information about state legislation for vision screening and/or mandated eye exams
• The Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) mandates that all health insurance include a pediatric vision benefit. In most states, that includes one comprehensive eye exam and one pair of eyeglasses. For more information, Prevent Blindness offers the fact sheet in English or Spanish, “The Affordable Care Act and Your Child's Eyes.”
• Prevent Blindness partners with programs such as VSP’s “Sight for Students,” “OneSight” from Luxottica, and “Let’s Go See” from Visionworks and Davis Vision, that provide free eye exams and glasses to children who qualify.
• For educators, Prevent Blindness offers the Star Pupils Eye Health and Safety Curriculum for grades K-2, 3-5 and 6-8. The program, which is available free for download upon request, provides teachers with interactive materials that help students learn the importance of sight, components of the eye and how we see, and how to identify objects and situations that can be dangerous to eyes. The program meets National Health, National Science and National Physical Education standards and includes lesson plans with presentation PowerPoints and teacher guides, in-class activities and take-home worksheets.

For more information on children’s eye health and safety, the NCCVEH, eye care assistance programs, or the Star Pupils Eye Health and Safety Curriculum, please call Prevent Blindness at (800) 331-2020.

President Obama Generates ACA Publicity with Sunglasses

"Obama 'selfie stick' video: End of Western civilization or hip marketing?" asks the Christian Science Monitor headline. "In a BuzzFeed video, President Obama uses a selfie stick, tries on sunglasses, makes 'you’re looking good' gestures, and so forth. Why is he doing this? He gets in a long plug for signing up for Obamacare coverage." See video. Buzz Feed reported that as of yesterday afternoon, people had downloaded the video 54 million times.

Why the Affordable Care Act Does Not Cover Vision

“Healthcare.gov will reopen for business on Nov. 15, welcoming millions of Americans to an insurance marketplace that offers medical plans and dental coverage. No one will be shopping for separate eye-care plans, an exclusion that roils companies that sell vision insurance. Even though they aren’t getting new customers, vision insurers still have to pay the Affordable Care Act’s tax on health insurance providers. Why did vision get left out of Obamacare?” asks Business Week. “The answer reveals a lot about the rabbit hole of bureaucracy and political gridlock that’s responsible for so much of American public policy in 2014. Vision plans were originally intended to be part of the exchanges when the ACA was being drafted, says Rob Lynch, chief executive of VSP Global, a vision plan that covers eye care for 67 million Americans. Lawmakers became concerned about how subsidies to help people afford coverage would be split among medical, dental, and visual providers, so glasses got left out. But eye-care plans remained subject to the tax on health insurers. When VSP paid the fee last week, the levy amounted to $25 million. In a letter to the Internal Revenue Service along with the payment, VSP’s general counsel said the company intends to seek a refund.” Read more.

3 Dozen States Not to Receive Federal Subsidies for Health Insurance

"A federal district judge in Oklahoma dealt a blow to the Affordable Care Act on Tuesday, ruling that the federal government could not subsidize health insurance in three dozen states that refused to establish their own marketplaces. This appears to increase the likelihood that the Supreme Court will ultimately resolve the issue," reports the New York Times. "Federal appeals courts in Washington and in Richmond, Va., split on this question in July. Judge Ronald A. White of the Federal District Court in Muskogee, Okla., said Tuesday that a rule issued by the Obama administration allowing subsidies in the 36 states was arbitrary and capricious, in excess of statutory authority or simply 'an invalid implementation' of the 2010 health care law. The ruling, if ultimately upheld, could cut off financial assistance for more than 4.5 million people who were found eligible for subsidized insurance in the federal exchange, or marketplace. However, the judge stayed the effect of his decision to allow for an appeal, and Emily Pierce, a Justice Department spokeswoman, said the federal government would file one." Read more.

ACA does not provide subsidized vision care for adults but it does for children.

Federal Courts Issue Conflicting Rulings about Subsidies under ACA

"Two federal appeals court panels issued conflicting rulings Tuesday on whether the government could subsidize health insurance premiums for people in three dozen states that use the federal insurance exchange," reports the New York Times. "The decisions are the latest in a series of legal challenges to central components of President Obama’s health care law." Read more.

Affordable Care Act on Target for Eye Care

The Obama administration announced July 2 it was delaying the deadline until 2015 for penalties targeting large employers who do not provide health insurance coverage to their workers. Although this decision represents a significant change to the president’s timetable and approach toward implementation, the AOA Advocacy Group reports there has been no change in the law’s full recognition of optometrists as providers of essential care or in how eye health care will be integrated into comprehensive health insurance coverage for children beginning in 2014. Read more.

Exchanges Remain as a Portion of Obamacare Is Delayed

"In a significant setback for President Obama’s signature domestic initiative, the administration on Tuesday abruptly announced a one-year delay, until 2015, in his health care law’s mandate that larger employers provide coverage for their workers or pay penalties," writes the New York Times. The post added: "While the postponement technically does not affect other central provisions of the law — in particular those establishing health insurance marketplaces in the states, known as exchanges, where uninsured Americans can shop for policies — it threatens to throw into disarray the administration’s effort to put those provisions into effect by Jan. 1." Starting next year, individuals without employer-based health insurance will have to purchase insurance or face the penalties. Read more.

The Impact of the Affordable Care Act

If you want to get an idea of the impact of the Affordable Care Act, you might want to read a series being published by the New York Times. "To follow how the historic law is playing out, The New York Times will look periodically at its impact in Louisville, a city of 600,000 that embodies both the triumphs and the shortcomings of the medical system in the United States." Read more.

EyeMed Says New Approach Makes Business Easier for ECPs

EyeMed Vision Care is implementing an updated business model that will keep it simple for eye care professionals to do business with the company and improve exam reimbursements. The model was tested with more than 150 independent provider locations and is designed to support provider practice growth, simplify administration, and deliver a wide choice of products and labs, according to a company spokesperson. The model was designed over the past two years with input from more than 2,000 independent providers collected through focus groups, beta tests, and a pilot program of more than 150 different provider locations. Read more to find out about the benefit details.

VSP Tells California to Use Colorado Model for Stand Alones

“VSP Vision Care has advice for board members from Covered California when they meet Thursday to decide how and when to offer stand-alone vision and other supplemental benefits in the new health insurance marketplace: look at Colorado.” That’s the report from the Sacramento Business Journal. “Last week, Connect for Health Colorado voted to provide direct access to stand-alone vision plans for consumers via a link during the health insurance enrollment process that starts Oct. 1. Like other states — including California — Colorado hit a stumbling block in March when new federal rules narrowed the way supplemental plans can be offered in exchanges. These products can be offered by separate state programs that share resources and infrastructure with a state-based exchange, but federal subsidies can’t be used for non-essential benefits — nor can exchange administrative fees support them.” For more details, read more.

States Limit Access to Health Care

“With only a few months remaining before Americans will start buying coverage through the new state insurance exchanges under President Obama’s health care law, it is becoming clear that the millions of people purchasing policies in the exchanges will find that their choices vary sharply, depending on where they live,” according to a New York Times post.”States like California, Colorado and Maryland have attracted an array of insurers. But options for people in other states may be limited to an already dominant local Blue Cross plan and a few newcomers with little or no track record in providing individual coverage, including the two dozen new carriers across the country created under the Affordable Care Act.”Read more.

White House Touting the Affordable Care Act

You want to get a jump on how the Affordable Care Act could affect you as an optician, as a citizen?  Read the following from The White House Blog (yes, that white house on Pennsylvania Ave.): “And every health insurance plan in the Marketplace will cover a standard set of essential health benefits that includes, among other benefits, hospital stays, prescription drug coverage, preventive services, oral and vision care for kids. Open enrollment begins October 1, 2013. Get ready now for the Marketplace by signing up for e-mails and text messages for updates and information at <https://signup.healthcare.gov/>. In June, the site will be unveiling the new Marketplace. You’ll be able to learn everything you need to know about the Marketplace, including how it works, the benefits of health insurance, how to choose a plan based on your needs and lifestyle, and more. Then in the fall, you can use this site to enroll in a plan from home, or from any place you can access the Web.” Read more.

Final Rules for the Affordable Care Act

"The Obama administration issued a final rule on Wednesday defining 'essential health benefits' that must be offered by most health insurance plans next year, and it said that 32 million people would gain access to coverage of mental health care as a result," according to a New York Times post. "Under the rule, health plans must provide benefits that have not always been provided by commercial insurers. For example, insurers must cover dental care and vision services for children, as well as 'habilitative services' to help people with disabilities keep or improve their skills." Read more.

Most States Refuse to Set Up Health Insurance Exchanges

“The Obama administration said Friday that more than half the states had rejected its pleas to set up their own health insurance exchanges, dealing a setback to President Obama’s hopes that Republicans would join a White House campaign to provide health insurance to all Americans,” according to a New York Times post.“Friday was the deadline for states to notify the federal government of their plans, and administration officials had been hoping that Mr. Obama’s re-election would overcome resistance to the new health care law.Federal officials said they knew of 17 states that intended to run their own exchanges, as Congress intended.” Read more. FYI: The exchanges can set up insurance programs that would help with the coverage of vision care for children.

PPACA Should Include Vision Care, Say Experts

"As states set up their exchanges under the federal health law, they should consider including adult vision benefits, according to the authors of a new study showing that people without such coverage are less likely to seek care," reports Kaiser Health News. "Although the federal health law mandates vision coverage for children, the same requirement does not apply to adults. States themselves can require certain insurance benefits. And researchers from the Arnold School of Public Health at the University of South Carolina suggest strong reasons for doing so. In their study, published Monday in the Archives of Ophthalmology, the researchers found that more than 40 percent of people in their study lacked vision insurance. They also looked at a subgroup of about 12 percent of people in the study who reporting having glaucoma, macular degeneration, or cataracts — the three leading causes of vision loss in the U.S. About 40 percent of that group also did not have vision insurance. Yet nearly 90 percent of both groups had health insurance." Read more.

The Limited Role of Vision Care under the Affordable Care Act

We missed this story that appeared Nov. 20 in the New York Times:

The Obama administration took a big step on Tuesday to carry out the new health care law by defining “essential health benefits”...Insurance companies are rushing to devise health benefit plans that comply with the federal standards. Starting in October [2013], people can enroll in the new plans, for coverage that begins on Jan. 1, 2014...
The rules lay out 10 broad categories of essential health benefits, but allow each state to specify the benefits within those categories, at least for 2014 and 2015. ...Most states are defining essential benefits to be those provided by the largest health plan in the state’s small-group insurance market. However, to comply with the law, federal officials said, insurers must provide certain additional benefits, including dental care and vision services for children..." Read more.

Some States Struggle Setting Up Insurance Exchanges

"The days since President Obama won re-election have been marked by tension and angst in Republican-led states like Iowa, where Gov. Terry Branstad has waited until the last minute to decide whether to create a crucial tool for people to get medical coverage under Mr. Obama’s health care law," according to the New York Times. "'There has been a total blackout of information,' said State Senator Jack Hatch, a Democrat who vented his frustration at a news conference here this week. 'We’re behind schedule, we’re at a disadvantage, and I don’t know what our governor’s plan is to reposition Iowa.' States are supposed to tell the Obama administration by Friday whether they want to create their own health insurance exchange — a deadline that many had bet might never come to pass, choosing to sit on their hands for months in the hope that Mitt Romney would win the presidency and the health care law would be repealed." Read more.

Groups, Including Health Care Groups, Swarm the Supreme Court

"Justice Clarence Thomas likens all the outside political pressure that the Supreme Court is facing over its review of the Obama administration’s sweeping health care law to the distraction faced by a free-throw shooter confronted with fans waving wildly behind the basket. Neither, in his view, has much impact in the end," starts the New York Times post. "The groups filing amicus briefs include not only the usual heavy hitters like the chamber, AARP and virtually every major health care association, but also obscure groups that have rarely, if ever, been involved in a Supreme Court case...Dozens of other constituencies filing briefs put in similar efforts....Economists are wading into the debate with briefs that offer clashing views of the benefits and harms that they believe the health care law brings....And the State of Massachusetts, which approved a similar insurance model under Gov. Mitt Romney in 2006, argues in its amicus brief that its experience 'confirms that Congress had a rational basis' to impose minimum insurance requirements." Read more.  .

A Look at the Possible Effects of the Supreme Courts Ruling on the ACA

The Atlantic Montly reports that "welcome to America, the land of the free and the home of the brave, on the eve of the big Supreme Court arguments over the Affordable Care Act, where you cannot swing a reply brief without hitting a lawyer or a lobbyist or a medical "expert" willing (for some free publicity) to share with you his or her ponderous view of how it's all going to come out. I have received hundreds upon hundreds of emails pitching such knowledge and prescience-- and one of the best parts about the looming end of this case will be the end of these emails." Read more about the possibilities of the ACA and how it may affect you.

Read more from the Huffington Post.