Posted on 02/24/2011 5:22:01 PM PST by speciallybland
FRANKFORT — Gov. Steve Beshear on Thursday signed into law a controversial measure that will let optometrists perform some laser eye surgeries.
Ophthalmologists — eye surgeons who graduated from medical school — fought the bill, arguing that optometrists are not qualified to perform surgery. Optometrists do not attend medical school, but they do receive four years of optometry training after graduating from college and are trained to detect vision defects and prescribe corrective lenses.
But Beshear sided with the optometrists, who promoted Senate Bill 110 as offering better access to health care. Many rural areas of the state have optometrists but not ophthalmologists, optometrists told lawmakers.
“Access to quality health care is a critical issue for families across the commonwealth,” Beshear said in a statement. “After careful consideration, along with meetings with many interested parties, today I signed Senate Bill 110 to give Kentuckians greater access to necessary eye care.”
The law will let optometrists remove lumps and bumps and use lasers to treat a few specified conditions, although they cannot perform Lasik corrective surgery, which uses a laser to change the shape of the cornea, or any other procedure requiring general anesthesia.
The legislature passed SB 110 quickly and overwhelmingly following a lobbying blitz and big campaign donations by optometrists to Beshear and legislators. On Thursday, the Legislative Ethics Commission said the Kentucky Optometric Association increased its Frankfort lobbying force from four to 18 lobbyists this session, including 13 lobbyists who started Feb. 1.
Optometrists and their political action committee have upped their donations to state elected leaders over the past year, campaign finance records show. In 2010, optometrists gave $250,000 to all political candidates, compared with just less than $50,000 in 2009, according to the Kentucky Registry of Election Finance.
(Excerpt) Read more at bluegrasspolitics.bloginky.com ...
Follow the donations.
Anyone that lets an optometrist operate on their eyes deserve what
they get. IMO
So I guess Ophthalmologist will next on the endangered list.
What’s next? Chiropractors doing back surgery?........
In one day last fall my eye was examined by four different opthamalogical specialists who decided my regular surgeon (My Word, I had a "regular surgeon" by then) should do the additional work the next morning so be there at 7AM.
BTW, retina problems are the only ones I know of, outside of auto accidents and shootings in the chest, that get you to the front of the line!
Welcome to universal health care. I mean you don't think the English actually want their teeth to look like that, do you?
I had a friend who was an optometrist. The poor guy fell into his lens grinding machine...he made a real spectacle of himself.
A couple of years back, a state representative from Jacksonville tried to get a funds into the state budget to set up a School of Chiropractic at FSU. He was ridiculed so bad he had to pull the amendment from the floor. .....
Quack, quack, quack......blind!
This is a lawyer fodder law
This has disaster written all over it. Surgery should be done by surgeons who have trained for years, not hours.
Analogous to letting the guy at the feed store do surgery on your animals....my bad...they already do this.
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