Usa: new rules for contact lenses

The U.S. House last Wednesday approved the "Fairness to Contact Lens Wearers Act" with a vote of 406-12: the bill ensure consumers can have access to their contact lens prescriptions, and the ability to buy their lenses from any seller, be it an eye doctor, a discount club or an Internet company.

Members also passed a bill that requires the Food and Drug Administration to regulate coloured contact lenses that do not correct vision as medical devices instead of cosmetics.

"Today is a great day for the 36 million contact lens wearers in the United States", said Rep. Richard Burr, R-N.C., sponsor of the prescription bill. "For the first time in federal legislation, patients are told they must go back regularly to their eye doctors and get their contact lens prescriptions renewed. If patients try to buy contact lenses with expired prescriptions, sellers by law cannot fill their orders", Burr said.

The bill also prohibits a prescribing eye-care professional from charging a fee to provide a copy of the Rx to a patient and it allows contact lenses providers to fill a prescription if the eye-care professional does not call back within eight hours to verify it.