Speaker: Vision care should continue to be essential health care

Vision screenings and vision health care, especially for children, should continue to be treated as an essential health benefit, a speaker said at the Prevent Blindness 2017 Focus on Eye Health National Summit in Washington, D.C.

“Any country that cares about health care, that cares about education, that cares about identifying whether or not a kid has a disability or is becoming blind, cares about quality of life, would never make essential health benefits, including pediatric vision, negotiable or waivable by any political body,” Cyrus Habib, lieutenant governor of Washington, said.

Habib, a three-time cancer survivor who lost his eyesight due to retinoblastoma at the age of 8 years, served as the keynote speaker at the annual summit and discussed his ideas regarding pediatric vision care and Medicaid as Congress discussed health care just blocks away, with the possible repeal and replacement of the Affordable Care Act on the table.

“This policy proposal being considered in the Senate right now constitutes just a massive step backwards,” Habib said.

He related his own life story and how vision screenings as a child allowed his doctors to identify that his cancer had returned and how access to those screenings and quality health insurance saved his life.

“It’s not hyperbole when they say people will die. It is true in my case. I would have died. Cancer would have spread to my brain within a year,” he said.

Habib advocated for a bipartisan discussion regarding the ACA, resulting in a plan that would save health care benefits for those who need them the most.

“What we don’t need to do is look at Americans aged 50 to 75, pre-Medicare Americans, who are facing the risks of age-related macular degeneration, cataracts and other eye care needs, and raise premiums and deductibles on them so much as to make health insurance unaffordable,” he said. “That’s both a recipe for these exchanges collapsing and it’s also targeting financially those who need health insurance the most.” – by Rebecca L. Forand

Reference:

Habib C. Keynote address. Presented at: 2017 Focus on Eye Health National Summit; June 28, 2017; Washington.