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By Teri K. Geist, OD
August 7, 2026
This opinion piece is in response to a July article in Review of Optometric Business.
Together with national health policy leaders and consumer and patient advocacy groups, doctors of optometry are fighting back decisively and effectively against the schemes used by plan middlemen to devalue care, restrict patient choice and specifically target independent optometry through coercive contracting, unjustified clawbacks and abusive audits. Tough new laws are being designed and enacted—with strong bipartisan support—to respect the rights of doctors and patients in the contracting process, safeguard doctor-patient decision-making and require full disclosure of Vision Benefit Manager (VBM) business conflicts, including through the harmful and restrictive materials steering and tiering they’ve made all too common through their market dominance.
As needed reforms continue to advance in the legislative arena, the VBM industry is also facing fresh legal challenges and an array of government investigations into their acquisitions, tactics and questionable compliance with anti-trust laws. With pressure mounting on these VBMs and their credibility declining, our frontline advocates see the industry doubling down more aggressively than ever on PR, legal defense resources and lobbying spending and upping its attacks on optometry. In recent months, the AOA has uncovered, publicly exposed and defeated key elements of a VBM industry misinformation campaign, including their outrageous effort to disparage independent doctors of optometry as “salesmen” and as leading examples of greed in healthcare.
THE FUTURE OF VISION CARE
Our state optometric associations and the AOA will never allow any VBM attack on us to go unanswered, any VBM false claim to go unchallenged or any VBM threat to go unmet. As the profession considers the future of vision care, it is essential that coverage reflects the broader implications of vision benefit policies for patients, doctors and communities—not solely the perspectives of organizations with a direct financial stake in maintaining the status quo. A more complete examination of these issues will help advance an informed conversation about how best to preserve patient choice, fair competition and access to high-quality eyecare.
The AOA’s legal and regulatory policy teams take action on every complaint received about plan abuses. Please reach out to me at president@aoa.org with any information you would like to report or if you would like to get active in support of state or federal VBM accountability legislation.
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Teri K. Geist, OD, is the president of the American Optometric Association. To contact her: president@aoa.org |
