Florida Politics - Campaigns & Elections. Lobbying & Government.

Peter SchorschNovember 18, 2016

As Anton Chekhov once said: If it’s not essential, don’t include it in the story. What would the great Russian novelist and playwright make of recent movements in Florida’s seemingly never-neverending Eyeball Wars between ophthalmologists and optometrists? “If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the […]

Peter SchorschOctober 25, 2016

For nearly two decades, Tallahassee was the front line of an epic battle — the so-called “Eyeball Wars” — between Florida’s optometrists and ophthalmologists. On one side were optometrists — college educated to provide diagnoses and correct vision problems — fighting to perform surgery and prescribe medications beyond topical ointments and creams. Ophthalmologists, supported by […]

Peter SchorschAugust 26, 2016

It’s been several years since the war ended. Many of the veterans who fought the battles of this war are no longer with us. All that’s left are the headlines declaring the end of hostilities. I am referring, of course, to the “Eyeball Wars” that raged through the last decade and the beginning of this […]

Ryan RaySeptember 23, 2015

It’s not exactly the “Eyeball Wars” of yesteryear, but on Wedneday Sen. Jack Latvala waded into the fraught world of vision care. Latvala’s just-filed SB 340 is a move similar to a bill from the 2015 Legislative Session in that it’s designed to prevent the concentration of too much control by insurers over access to eye and vision care. […]

Christine Jordan SextonMarch 23, 2015

The Senate Health Policy Committee on Monday gave the nod to a bill that would restrict contact lens manufacturers from preventing retailers from selling or advertising contact lenses below a set price. The bill, SB 1400 by Sen. Tom Lee, brought lobbyists from Las Vegas, Utah, and Washington, leading former Senate President Don Gaetz to joke that […]

Tag: eyeball wars

Chekhov’s Gun in the Eyeball Wars? Optometrists are lobbied up for 2017

Are optometrists going back on their word in ‘Eyeball War’ truce?

Will Florida’s ‘eyeball wars’ flare up again doing the 2017 Legislative Session?

Jack Latvala seeks to open up vision care market

Eyeball Wars II: Senate OKs bills letting retailers set price for contacts