|
|
Does the government always help with vision care?
First, I am a proud American and Vietnam Veteran, and I believe the United States is the greatest nation ever to exist. I also love California. Yet do we always get it right? In the US and also in California, there is room for opinions. There are a few things that need scrutiny to ensure your children have both good vision and a good education. |
A few years ago, California’s legislature proposed a well-intended bill, AB 1110, that requires kids to be examined by an eye doctor upon entering school. But does it help? The bill aims to identify children with vision conditions that may impact their learning. It sounds good on the surface. Yet, do all eye doctors emphasize methods to detect and treat visually related learning problems? The answer may surprise you.
School vision screening does not find eye problems that affect learning, the original intent of the 1947 school screening law. Dr. Walter B. Lancaster conducted a study at Dartmouth College in the late 1930s, finding that students with the worst visual acuity (eyesight) had the best grades. See School Vision Screening A Closer Look. The study created an emergence of optometrists intent on discovering the real link between vision and learning.
It was developmental optometrists who, after observing the results of the Dartmouth study, created better screening, testing, and treatments for visually related learning problems. Developmental optometrists can identify kids with visually related learning problems and then provide methods, often simple, to treat them. The same treatment also prevents vision problems like nearsightedness.
However, developmental optometrists only comprise about 5% of all eye doctors. The good news is they are growing rapidly.
|
|
Thus, 95% of eye doctors don’t emphasize vision and learning, or don’t believe in it. A local eye doctor even had a brochure that said vision is not related to learning. The traditional doctors may miss a visually related learning problem. After all, the eye doctor said I had 20/20 vision, and a vision problem could not cause the learning problem.
|
That leaves children's help to only special education and tutoring. The special education and tutoring may not have been necessary if the visually related learning problem had been discovered and treated.
Further, doctors not trained in visually related learning problems may unwittingly prescribe glasses that interfere with learning and contribute to the current nearsightedness epidemic.
Parents under AB1110 are required to pay for an exam that may not detect the condition the bill aims to identify. Currently, many patients I see were told by another doctor that their vision had nothing to do with their learning difficulty because they had 20/20 visual acuity. AB1110 may increase that number. Fortunately reason prevailed in the CA legislature, and the bill only advises the exam. Any parent can opt out.
Government vision care for Veterans
CA's MediCal vision care for the needy.
Medicare's vision care for senior citizens.