This act modernizes the Fairness to Contact Lens Consumers Act by requiring online sellers to accept electronic prescription transfers, mandating encrypted email for health information, and updating required seller contact information.
H. Griffith
Representative
VA-9
The Contact Lens Prescription Verification Modernization Act updates existing law to ensure consumers can easily obtain and use their contact lens prescriptions. This bill specifically requires online sellers to provide a HIPAA-compliant method for electronically receiving prescriptions and mandates encryption for any protected health information sent via email. Additionally, it updates seller record-keeping requirements to include customer email addresses.
New Contact Lens Bill Mandates Encrypted Prescriptions, But Opens Door to Automated Sales Calls
The Contact Lens Prescription Verification Modernization Act is designed to update how you buy contacts online, focusing heavily on modernizing data security and prescription verification. This bill makes two major moves: it tightens up privacy rules for your health data, but it also creates a massive loophole for automated sales calls.
Digital Upgrade: Your Prescription Gets a Security Boost
If you’ve ever tried to buy contacts online, you know the process of getting your prescription from the eye doctor to the online retailer can be clunky. This bill aims to fix that by mandating that online sellers must provide a way for customers to electronically send a copy of their contact lens prescription. Crucially, this transfer method must be HIPAA-compliant—the same standard that protects your medical records. For everyday people, this means less faxing or emailing unsecure photos of your prescription and more confidence that your health information is being handled securely.
Furthermore, Section 2 requires that if an online seller sends any of your protected health information (like your prescription details) via email, that email must be encrypted. This is a big win for data privacy. It means that the seller can’t just use a regular Gmail account to send sensitive info; they have to use secure, encrypted channels. This protects your vision data—your specific measurements and corrective needs—from being easily intercepted. Sellers also now have to collect and keep your email address, alongside your physical address and phone number, which means they must also ensure their internal databases are secure to protect this new trove of personal data.
The Catch: Welcome to the Telemarketing Free-for-All
Here’s where the bill takes a sharp turn. While it’s securing your prescription data, Section 2 also includes a small, seemingly technical clause that clarifies what counts as a prohibited call under existing telemarketing rules. It states that a call made using an artificial or prerecorded voice doesn’t count as the type of unsolicited sales call that is currently restricted. In plain English? This provision effectively creates a giant exemption for robocalls.
If you’re already tired of getting automated calls about your car warranty or credit card offers, get ready for a potential flood of new ones—this time, likely from contact lens sellers, but also potentially from any business that can use this new exemption. For the busy professional, the contractor on the job site, or the parent juggling school pickups, this means more time wasted screening unwanted, automated sales pitches. It’s a classic policy trade-off: better data security in one hand, but a louder, more aggressive sales environment in the other. It’s important to note that this exemption applies to telemarketing rules generally, not just contact lenses, meaning the impact could be widespread across different industries that use automated calls for sales.