Advocacy News

The Montana House of Representatives voted to pass HB 218 that will permit optometrist to perform scalpel eyelid and laser eye surgery including YAG capsulotomy, selective laser trabeculoplasty, and peripheral iridotomy.

Academy leaders have identified physician payment reform, reducing practice burdens, Medicare Advantage and Quality Performance Program issues, as well as military veterans’ eye care as some of our top federal advocacy priorities for 2025.

New bills were introduced in Minnesota and Ohio that would expand optometrists' ability to prescribe ophthalmic medications to patients and to perform scalpel eyelid and laser eye surgery.

See how the Surgical Scope Fund helped successfully defend safe eye surgery in a year of record setting scope challenges at the state level, winning in 10 of 14 states so far.

A Surgical Scope Fund Committee member and former OPHTHPAC committee member explains how your contributions drive the Academy’s advocacy efforts.

Academy members William Clifford, MD, of Kansas, and Steven Magie, MD, of Arkansas, won their campaigns for state office.

Following sustained advocacy engagement with the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services Secretary Valerie Arkoosh and department staff, the Pennsylvania Academy of Ophthalmology won higher payment rates for numerous pediatric ophthalmology service codes in the state’s Medicaid program.

Ophthalmology’s top champion in the U.S. House of Representatives, Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks, MD, R-Iowa, urgently needs your support or she risks losing her reelection in what will prove to be a very close race.

New Jersey state Assemblyman and candidate for New Jersey’s 3rd Congressional District, Herb Conaway, MD, issued a stark warning if Congress fails to address Medicare reimbursement cuts at the last OPHTHPAC speaker series event of the year.

When the California State Legislature adjourned its 2023-24 legislative session, a bill that would have threatened safe eye surgery died, notching another win for ophthalmology and the Academy’s Surgical Scope Fund.