Senate passes contact-lens consumer protection bill after lengthy debate and amendment

The Utah Senate on Feb. 20 passed first substitute Senate Bill 176, the Contact Lens Consumer Protection Act, aiming to curb alleged collusion that limited consumers’ purchase options for mass‑produced contact lenses. Sponsor Senator Kurt Bramble cast the measure as a fix to a market loophole revealed during prior litigation and consent decrees.

"This bill gives teeth to the state to pursue broker dealers when they're trading in stock that they don't actually have," Bramble said while describing analogous market problems and the legislative intent to protect Utah manufacturers and consumers. He referenced a Federal Trade Commission study and earlier consent-decree litigation involving manufacturers and the American Optometric Association.

Opponents, including Senator Jenkins, argued the bill could place a new burden on prescribers who also sell lenses. "It appears to me that it's essential that a manufacturer has to register their mass produced lens before a prescriber can sell it," Jenkins said, urging caution that the measure could limit distribution options for doctors who have traditionally fit and sold lenses.

Sponsor Bramble and others disputed that characterization, saying the statute targets only instances where a prescriber colludes with a manufacturer to restrict alternative distribution channels. The Senate adopted amendment 3 (dated Feb. 20, 2006, 08:05AM) to clarify the language and to add a "low-volume" account carve-out that gives manufacturers discretion over low-volume accounts.

A procedural wrinkle slowed final passage: senators discovered only one side of the two-page amendment had been distributed on the floor, so the body recalled the bill, re-adopted the complete amendment and resumed debate. After the correction and further explanation from the sponsor, the Senate voted to pass the bill as amended, 21 yes, 7 no, 1 absent; the bill will be transmitted to the House for consideration.

What the bill does and does not do: according to sponsors’ floor remarks, physicians remain free to prescribe any lens; the statute prohibits a prescriber from both prescribing a mass-produced lens and then retailing that same mass-produced lens to the same patient when the product is not available through alternative distribution channels and where there is an identifiable collusive arrangement. The sponsor emphasized that custom-fit lenses and lenses that are not mass produced or mass marketed are exempt.

Next steps: SB 176 is referred to the Utah House. If the House enacts the measure and the governor signs it, enforcement would be conducted in part through the Attorney General's Office as structured in the bill and as explained on the floor.

Votes and procedural notes: the Senate initially passed an earlier version of the substitute (vote recorded earlier in the day), recalled the bill to correct an amendment distribution error, and then passed the amended bill 21–7–1. Several senators offered brief explanations for their votes during the roll call.