Dr. Adam Katz, President of the Florida Society of Ophthalmology today released the following statement after HB 1037 passed out of the Health Quality Subcommittee.

"This proposed legislation puts the health and well-being of millions of Floridians at risk. This bill would grant broad and unprecedented surgical privileges to optometrists who are not medical doctors, never attended medical school, and who are certainly not adequately trained to perform scalpel surgery, laser surgery, or prescribe narcotics.

The American Academy of Ophthalmology (AAO) has joined a coalition of other medical associations in an American Medical Association (AMA) grassroots campaign calling for a permanent Medicare physician pay fix. The coalition is advocating for repeal of the sustainable growth rate (SGR) formula that is used to update Medicare physician pay. Physicians are scheduled for a 30 percent Medicare pay cut on Jan. 1, unless Congress intervenes.

In a letter sent to members of the Joint Congressional Committee on Deficit Reduction last week, the AMA and 116 state and specialty medical societies asked the committee to include repeal of Medicare's flawed payment formula, the sustainable growth rate (SGR), in its spending plan.