Guest blogger Mark Richert, Esq. is an attorney with extensive experience in public policy and governmental relations in the vision loss field and is the Director of the Public Policy Center of the American Foundation for the Blind (AFB).
The AFB Public Policy Center, in Washington, DC, collaborates with policy makers in Congress and the Executive Branch to ensure that Americans with vision loss have equal rights and opportunities to fully participate in society.
As Director, Mark is AFB’s primary representative to the United States Congress and to federal agencies with oversight of programs and services of key importance to individuals with vision loss. You can read his full biography at the AFB website.
Medicare and Low Vision Devices
For decades, the vision loss community has been advocating for Medicare’s coverage of assistive technologies, particularly low vision devices. Currently, Medicare will not pay for any device that happens to use a lens, regardless of whether the device incorporates any other features. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), the federal agency responsible for the management of Medicare, has ruled that devices containing a lens – such as low vision devices – are excluded from coverage, just as are eyeglasses or contact lenses, except in very narrow circumstances.
New Legislation Introduced
Now, for the first time, federal legislation would begin to change this unacceptable national policy by establishing a nationwide Medicare demonstration project to evaluate the fiscal impact of a permanent change in Medicare coverage to pay for low vision devices.
The legislation, H.R. 3749, the Medicare Demonstration of Coverage for Low Vision Devices Act of 2013, was introduced by Representatives Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) and Gus Bilirakis (R-FL). It would initiate a five-year demonstration project that would put low vision devices in the hands of Medicare beneficiaries who, after a clinical evaluation by an ophthalmologist or optometrist, can benefit from a low vision device and for whom these devices are medically necessary.
The legislation is careful to require that the demonstration project be genuinely national in scope and is explicitly designed to yield reliable data and meaningful results. Once the legislation is enacted and the demonstration project is successfully completed, Congress will have significantly richer data upon which to consider changes to the Medicare program to make coverage of low vision devices, especially the most costly devices, a permanent feature of the program.
Precisely how many individuals will receive low vision devices and how many physicians across the country will participate in the demonstration project will need to be determined by CMS, working in consultation with stakeholder groups, as it develops and implements the project. The legislation makes $12.5 million available for the project over five years.
The Blindness Field Collaborates on H.R. 3749
The work that has led to the introduction of this important legislation should serve as a primer on how our field can effectively influence the policy process through joint labor:
- American Council of the Blind (ACB) initiated the national effort to refocus our field’s attention on the need to address Medicare coverage for low vision devices. The nationally representative team of consumer, professional, and industry advocates that ACB brought together considered a variety of approaches to tackling the low vision device coverage issue.
- American Foundation for the Blind, as a participant in the ACB initiative, proposed that our field pursue a national Medicare demonstration project and prepared the legislative text that has been introduced in Congress.
- VisionServe Alliance made this issue one of its principal legislative priorities at ACB’s request when VisionServe members visited Capitol Hill last April.
- Lighthouse Guild International, supported by other VisionServe leadership and member organizations, was instrumental in securing our congressional supporters and advocates. This field-wide collaboration exemplifies the kind of effort that is best positioned to achieve results.
What You Can Do
Advocates are encouraged to contact their members of the U.S. House of Representatives and urge them to co-sponsor H.R. 3749. We are actively working on Senate champions and will keep you updated as progress is made.
More Information
For more information, contact Mark Richert, Esq. by email at MRichert@afb.net or phone at 202-469-6833. You can also read American Council of the Blind Commends U.S. House of Representatives at EIN Presswire.