Hundreds of ODs, Optometry Students Storm Capitol Hill as AOA Launches Largest Federal Advocacy Campaign Ever

More than 500 ODs and Students Carry Optometry’s Pro-access, Pro-Patient Message Directly to the Offices of Every U.S. Senator and Congressman

WASHINGTON, DC (June 24, 2009) — More than 500 American Optometric Association (AOA) doctors of optometry and optometry students from around the nation converged on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, June 24, 2009 as the debate over health care reform intensified to urge Congress to ensure access to optometric eye and vision care for America’s families, including veterans, working men and women, children and seniors.

Optometry’s latest and largest advocacy campaign serves as the culmination of the AOA’s most massive federal advocacy event to date—the 2009 AOA Congressional Advocacy Conference: Advocacy for Optometry’s Future. Hundreds of AOA members as well as representatives of the National Optometric Association (NOA), the American Optometric Student Association (AOSA) and the Association of Schools and Colleges of Optometry (ASCO) stormed Capitol Hill with the goal of raising awareness of the profession and advancing AOA’s pro-access, pro-patient agenda, including:

·         Health Care Reform – Ensuring patient access to care by making provider non-discrimination safeguards a foundation of health care reform legislation.

·         Medicare – Preventing the 21% Medicare physician payment cuts scheduled for January 1, 2010. 

·         Children’s Vision – Passing the Vision Care for Kids Act ( S. 259), a bill to establish federal grants to bolster state children’s vision and learning initiatives.

·         Expanding Access to Eye and Vision Care – Securing recognition and full inclusion of optometry in Medicaid (HR 2697), the National Health Service Corps (HR 1884) and other federal health programs.

·         Military and Veteran’s Health Care – Ensuring that America’s military service personnel and veterans are not forced to wait unnecessarily for the eye and vision care they need and deserve.

·         InfantSEE® – Supporting optometry’s vision-saving and potentially life-saving public health initiative that offers eye assessments for infants at no cost (www.InfantSEE.org).

“From the moment President Obama and Congressional leaders made health care reform their top priority, we knew that optometry would have to out work anti-optometry organizations and special interests,” said AOA President Peter H. Kehoe, O.D. and AOA President-elect Randolph Brooks, O.D., FAAO said in a joint statement. “Today, at an important moment in the debate over national health reform legislation, 503 optometrists and optometry students from across the country and representing all 50 states traveled to Washington, DC to take AOA's pro-access, pro-patient legislative agenda directly to the offices of every U.S. Senator and Congressman.”  

“The size and reach of our 2009 Congressional Advocacy Conference -- the biggest optometric advocacy event ever -- reflects the resolve of this profession and the patients we serve to be listened to and heeded when health care policy decisions are being made in the nation's capital,” said Drs. Kehoe and Brooks. “We could not be more proud of the doctors and students who have sacrificed to be here in order to put a national spotlight on optometry, on patient access issues and on the importance of eye and vision care in a way that's never been accomplished before.”