The sheeple immediately cry foul, saying it's price-fixing. Then, every 5 or 10 years, some deeply-caring politician will launch an investigation of one sort or another, vowing to "get to the bottom of it."
The result is always the same. There is no grand conspiracy. Rather, they all keep an eye on the competition and, when one makes a move, the rest react accordingly, either with a price war or, more often by price-matching (which is perfectly legal).
All of them at the same time, with no collusion.
“The manufacturers say the policies are intended to simplify the market and shift conversations between patients and optometrists away from the topic of pricing and toward the clinical benefits of their contact lenses,”
If the quote is accurate (it is the NYT, after all), this sounds like something different than simply “keeping an eye on the competition.” Shell, Chevron, BP, and Exxon/Mobile aren’t saying “we’re just trying to simplify pricing and change the conversation to the relative merits of the different additives in our gasoline.”