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Contact lens bills pass House
WASHINGTON — Two bills passed by the House of Representatives last month could change the way contact lenses are dispensed; one bill requires prescriptions for plano lenses, and another gives patients access to their prescriptions.
The first bill would amend the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetics Act to regulate plano cosmetic contact lenses as medical devices. The bill has been actively supported by Prevent Blindness America and the American Academy of Ophthalmology.
“The [Food and Drug Administration] issued several alerts seizing these foreign manufactured plano lenses that don’t meet FDA standards at the port of entry, but the legislation is what the Academy believed was needed,” the AAO said in a press release issued Nov. 19.
The Senate introduced its own version of the bill in October, according to the AAO press release.
The other House bill, in addition to requiring prescriptions for cosmetic lenses, mandates that patients receive a copy of their prescriptions for any type of contact lens, the AAO said in a separate press release issued the same day.