Vision Control and Autonomy Constraints: 

Managed Care Confronts Alternative Medicine

Torin Monahan

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Department of Science and Technology Studies

June 1998

Abstract:

Managed care’s incorporation of some complementary alternative medicine (CAM)

raises new questions about how CAMs are altered by this incorporation process and why some
CAMs are not incorporated at all.  This paper analyzes the relationship of one non-incorporated
CAM, behavioral optometry, to managed care and to the larger medical community.  I use
behavioral optometry as a case study to illuminate the forces at work behind managed care
policy decisions on CAM.  I argue that managed care dismisses behavioral optometry because of
its individualized approach and its conflict with existing conventional medicine
(ophthalmology).  I also claim that managed care policy decisions in regard to acceptable vision
care can have an influence in moving American health care ideologies away from individual
autonomy.       

Introduction

The impact of managed care programs upon the American health care market has been

well documented (Macdonald 1996; Kertesz 1995; Christensen 1995; Gray 1991).  Recent trends

show the increasing incorporation of complementary alternative medicine (CAM) into managed

care settings (Weeks 1997a).  Health maintenance organizations (HMOs), in particular, have

turned to CAM in response to patient demand for therapeutic care and low cost alternatives to

conventional therapies with dubious or low efficacy (Kelner & Wellman 1997; Edlin 1997). 

HMOs favor cost-efficient, complementary treatments that can be standardized and do not pose

a threat to mainstream medical practice (Weeks 1997b).  For chronic conditions, chiropractic,

massage, meditation, and naturopathy meet these criteria (Patton 1997; Weeks 1997a).  HMOs

seemingly ignore the more alternative end of the CAM therapeutic spectrum; individualized

therapies that serve as replacements for conventional medicine tend to get selected out.  Because

behavioral optometry, a specialty field within optometry, has a non-standardized approach and

www.torinmonahan.com 

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an institutional location as an alternative to ophthalmology, and because it has not fared well

with the transition to managed care, it can shed valuable light on the complex relationship

between managed care and CAM in the U.S..

This paper argues that the reasons for managed care’s exclusion of behavioral optometry

have little to do with efficacy concerns.  Managed care has failed to incorporate behavioral

optometry into its sphere of coverage because behavioral optometry challenges the existing,

conventional medical practice of ophthalmology and defies standardization, thereby making it

contentious within medical politics and unstable for economic projections.  The absence of

behavioral optometry from managed care plans leads doctors and patients to doubt its efficacy. 

Thus, managed care policy decisions can have an insidious effect on shaping treatment

ideologies: doctors and patients may come to devalue treatments, such as those prescribed by

behavioral optometrists, that require patients to take additional responsibility for the

maintenance of their health. 

After explaining my research methods, I weave my argument through three main

sections.  The first section sets the stage for a discussion of behavioral optometry by introducing

the current politically charged relationship between managed care and private practice

optometry.  The second section explores some reasons for the exclusion of behavioral optometry

from managed care plans.  The final section examines the social implications of managed care

plans that rule out holistic, individualized treatment options, such as those offered by behavioral

optometry.

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Methods

This paper represents one component of a larger research project on the development of

behavioral optometry as a specialty within the profession of optometry.  I base this paper on an

extensive review of the current academic and trade literature on optometry and managed care.  I

reviewed three prominent optometric journals, 

Journal of the American Optometric Association,

Journal of Optometric Vision Development

 and 

Journal of Behavioral Optometry

, from 1994 to

1998.  I conducted a similar review of a primary optometric trade publication: 

Review of

Optometry

.   

In addition to this literature review, this paper draws on short-term participant-

observation.  I made several trips in 1997 to one of the leading optometry schools advocating a

behavioral philosophy to vision care: Pacific University College of Optometry, located in

Oregon.  At Pacific, I had an examination with a behavioral optometrist and began a preventive

vision therapy treatment regimen.  (Optometric vision therapy (VT) regimens combine eye

exercises and body activities with the use of prisms, lenses, filters, and occlusion to alter mind-

body organization (Press 1997: 10).  Patients learn to overcome conflicts in processing and

responding to visual information during VT sessions; this acquired knowledge assists them in

completing real-world tasks.)  Furthermore, in 1997, I attended the annual meeting of the key

organization of behavioral optometrists in America: College of Optometrists in Vision

Development (COVD).  

To supplement the literature review and participant-observation, I conducted semi-

structured phone interviews with three COVD doctors in upstate New York.  (I obtained from

COVD a list of their “Certified Fellows” and “Associate Members” and contacted members

from that list.)  The purpose of the interviews was to check the accuracy of and get more details

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on the representations of behavioral optometry and managed care that were emerging in the

literature and at the conference.  My main questions for these doctors centered upon their

experiences with managed care coverage (or lack of coverage) for behavioral optometry’s

primary treatment modality — vision therapy (VT).  (Unless otherwise indicated this paper uses

the term vision therapy and its abbreviation, VT, to refer to optometric vision therapy prescribed

by behavioral optometrists.)  I also asked them to comment on the types of regimens they

prescribe and to reflect upon managed care’s effects on doctor-patient relationships.  I conducted

a similar semi-structured phone interview with another optometrist who had written a letter,

posted on the COVD web page, designed to assist patients in receiving insurance company

reimbursement.     

Tensions Between Managed Care and Optometry

This section examines the current relationship between managed care and private

practice optometry.  First, managed care’s emphasis on standardization and cost-efficiency

compels optometrists to standardize and commodify their services; these pressures challenge the

professional autonomy of optometrists and discourage the development of doctor-patient

relationships.  Second, some private practice optometrists unionize in response to managed

care’s threats to their practices.  The overall purpose of this section is to provide a context for

analyzing behavioral optometry’s uniqueness as a CAM excluded from managed care

environments.

A. Standardization and Commodification Pressures on Optometric Practice

  

Private practice optometrists whose business depends upon return patients and patient

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referrals typically spend close to an hour with each patient; they require this time in order to

sufficiently acquaint themselves with the unique visual processes and needs of each patient.  In a

routine eye exam, optometrists not only analyze the functioning of a patient’s visual system and

determine a method of treatment; they also search for vision-threatening conditions — such as a

detached retina or glaucoma — and for signs of other health-threatening conditions which

manifest themselves in the visual system — such as diabetes.  There is simply no way for these

optometrists to cut down on the amount of time they spend with patients without also cutting

down on the quality of care they typically provide.  

Limited vision-coverage by managed care organizations (MCOs) fiscally constrains

optometric practitioners with patients on managed care plans.  In an article in 

Review of

Optometry

, Scott A. Edmonds, O.D. remonstrates: 

When an MCO pays fee-for-service, it pays fees that it sets, not the doctor.  These fees

are discounted, often drastically.  For example, one of the largest MCOs in my region

pays me only 25 percent of my usual fee.  Where there’s more competition among plans,

optometrists are accepting just 10 to 15 percent of their normal fees.  (Edmonds 1996)

MCOs’ discounted fees threaten the viability of enough private optometric practices that

optometrists are now forming unions to help combat this danger.

MCOs may cover all of patients’ basic vision care fees, but the quality of care patients

receive suffers because of managed care structural and fiscal constraints upon optometrists.  The

“Managed Care Survival Kit” guide in 

Review of Optometry

 advises  practitioners to minimize

the time doctors spend with patients by having office staff perform more of the doctor’s duties

(Lee 1997).  Robert Davis, O.D., of Pembroke Pines, Florida, has implemented such “doctor

cloning” procedures in his practice: “The tech does all the testing with automated instruments,

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measures blood pressure, V.A., sets up the biomicroscope for the O.D., puts the Rx into the

phoropter [an instrument used to find the best optical correction for the eyes] and places

nearpoint cards exactly where the doctor wants them” (Lee 1997).  How can an optometrist

spend less time with patients yet supposedly administer the same high quality examinations and

develop the same doctor-patient relationships that they did before managed care? 

Aside from doctors spending less time with patients in offices such as Davis’, these

managed-care-friendly offices routinely schedule managed care patients for the least desirable

time slots and reserve the better weekend and evening time slots for their private patients (Lee

1997).  In other words, the patients that will bring more money into these practices are treated, at

least from a scheduling standpoint, better than managed care patients.  The “Managed Care

Survival Kit” concludes with this caveat to doctors: “Patient records are the holy grail of

managed care.  If it isn’t written down, it wasn’t done in the eyes of the managed-care plan. 

That means you won’t get paid” (Lee 1997).  While few doctors would interpret the advice given

in this article as “place managed care’s needs above your patients’ needs,” a workplace

environment attuned to cost-efficiency, discriminatory scheduling, and record keeping — the

demands of the managed care structure — must encounter some dissonance when trying to

simultaneously respond to patients’ health needs.

Given the constraints upon practice operation, why would optometrists join MCOs at all? 

Some doctors, including the ones I interviewed, simply do not join organizations that would alter

the way they conduct their practices.  In regions where managed care dominates the market,

many optometrists have no choice but to join managed care plans; they would not receive

enough patients to maintain their practices otherwise.  In other instances, doctors willingly adopt

an assembly-line approach to health care in order to capitalize upon profits they make from

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dispensing many pairs of glasses and contacts.  In these later cases, practitioners’ dependency

upon the material forms of glasses and patient records as necessary means to achieving profits

encourages the commodification of vision care on a scale that infringes upon the health care

functions of optometric practices. 

An anonymous source, not a doctor, at a private practice using one of the country’s

largest managed care vision-care providers, Vision Service Plan (VSP), related to me the details

of this plan’s reimbursement arrangement with that office.  Where the two optometrists in this

small practice usually charge $79 for a basic examination, VSP reimburses them only $40 per

exam.  This practice cannot afford to drop VSP, because over 80% of their patients originate

from the plan.  The practitioners still spend about an hour with each patient per examination, but

the only way they can compensate for revenues lost is by selling glasses to patients.  This private

practice can also regain an additional $5 for each claim filed by re-structuring their present

claim-filing system to VSP’s specifications: namely, if they file claims over the Internet (using

VSP software) instead of filing by phone.  

Innocuous as this change of electronic claim filing may seem, it signals yet another way

that the technology of managed care’s corporate structure infiltrates and alters the daily

functions this health care profession.  As with the previously discussed record keeping and

dispensing changes, electronic filing of patients’ claims contributes to a gradual shift in private

practice ideology away from patients’ needs and toward MCOs’ needs.

Quality care and doctor-patient relationships suffer when practitioners must see many

patients a day and sell many pairs of glasses to them in order to stay in business.  This is not to

say that optometrists working with MCOs do not value quality care or relationships with their

patients; rather, these optometrists face pressure to commodify all aspects of vision care.  The

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corporate model of vision care provides a poor setting for idealistic, altruistic, and holistic

treatment philosophies.  

Practitioners who enter the field of optometry because they want to provide the best

possible vision care can become disillusioned when faced with MCO pressures to restructure

their practices and challenges to justify their treatments for patients.  In discussing this topic, one

of my interviewees confessed: “If I were just coming into the field, I would probably look for

something else to do.”  A 1997 survey of practitioners who graduated from Pacific University

College of Optometry, suggests that insurance company pressures of the kind I have been

describing apply to a wide range of practicing optometrists.  This study, 

Practitioner Satisfaction

Survey on the Influence of Managed Care in Optometry

, petitioned 1,000 graduates of Pacific

University and received 197 responses.  Of these respondents, one-third agreed with the

statement that “The impact of managed care has required me to perform a less complete exam”

(Cook & Polster 1997: 6).  The question of “requiring” a doctor to perform a less complete exam

does not take into account doctors who do so without being forced to.  Thus, the number of

affirmative responses might have been greater had the researchers asked the practitioners to

respond to the following: “I perform a less complete exam because of managed care pressures.” 

The same criticism applies to another of this study’s profound findings: two-thirds of the

respondents agreed with the statement “Managed care has forced me to spend less time with my

patients” (9).

Managed care cost constraints may save MCOs and patients money in the short run, but

these constraints do so by encouraging the technocratization of vision care.  Generally speaking,

this restructuring leads to the dissatisfaction of practitioners with the conditions for providing

patient care.  The next section documents a movement by some optometrists to battle managed

Monahan 9

care hegemony over vision care coverage.      

B. Unionization — An Imperfect Solution

In order to combat managed care’s threat to the autonomy of optometrists and the

integrity of their practices, a number of optometrists have begun to unionize.  In 1997,

optometrists in Philadelphia created the Pennsylvania Optometric Guild (POG) in affiliation

with AFL-CIO to provide O.D.s and patients with a forum for expressing their concerns over the

path health care is taking in this country.  (One of my interviewees indicated that a group of

optometrists in New York is working to create a similar union.)  

For many optometrists in Philadelphia, POG is a last ditch effort for them to regain

control over their businesses.  Independent Blue Cross’ dominance over the market in

Philadelphia forces local optometrists into joining its vision-care provider, Davis Vision.  With

76.2% of Philadelphia’s patients on managed care plans, optometrists who fail to join Davis

Vision risk a critical loss of patients (Eisenberg 1998: 57).  Yet, those who do join have

difficulty providing the discount cost services that Davis Vision demands.  The founder of POG,

Aaron Chasan, O.D., articulates this point: “‘If we cannot meet our chair cost formula, we are

putting our practices and our livelihoods in jeopardy’” (57).  Optometrists in Philadelphia, as

well as those around the rest of the country, feel that “deep-discount vision plans have become

today’s sweatshops” (Kirkner 1998: 17) and that this change makes it difficult for optometrists

to provide quality services for patients (Edmunds 1996; Lee 1997; Cook & Polster 1997). 

The AFL-CIO accepted affiliation with POG to address the dissatisfaction of AFL-CIO

members with managed care.  Many patients in the Philadelphia area find that they must use

Davis Vision providers for their vision care needs, that Davis Vision offers few vision care plans

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to choose from, and that it fails to cover quality optical products or vision therapy (Eisenberg

1998: 56)  With 13 million AFL-CIO members and 85 percent of them on employer-provided

care programs, this union could demand that managed-care programs, Davis Vision in this case,

use union providers such as POG (58).  If Davis Vision fails to comply, the union could opt for

another program that accepts their request.  

Even successful AFL-CIO leverage tactics, however, would not ensure fair

reimbursement for unionized doctors.  The union cannot engage in collective bargaining for

POG because Federal antitrust regulations prohibit such activity for independent providers: “only

doctors who are employees of a hospital, staff model HMO or some other organization have this

option under the National Labor Relations Act” (58).  The best that POG doctors or other

unionized private practice optometrists can hope for is that increased media attention to the

problem will motivate managed care to reduce some of its restrictions upon optometric

practitioners.

Managed Care’s Exclusion of Behavioral Optometry

This section sheds light on some of the reasons for the exclusion of behavioral optometry

from managed care settings.  I begin with a general introduction to behavioral optometry and an

assessment of vision therapy’s efficacy.  Next, I explore and comment upon conventional

medicine’s influence, through the field of ophthalmology, upon managed care’s policy decision

to exclude behavioral optometry.  Finally, I critique the reasons for managed care’s exclusion of

optometric vision therapy as a treatment option.

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A. Philosophy of Behavioral Optometry and Efficacy of Vision Therapy

   

Where conventional optometrists mainly identify a patient’s refractive error and correct

it with prescribed prostheses, the treatment philosophy of behavioral optometry, exemplified by

the writings of one of the field’s founders, A.M. Skeffington, O.D., deviates dramatically from

this approach.  Skeffington writes: “The role of behavioral optometry is to restore as nearly as

possible optimal performance in a visual system already hampered by adaption to an energy, or

to initiate programs to prevent the development of visual problems . . .” (Hendrickson 1989: 2). 

Behavioral optometry, then, takes the patient’s refractive error into account but emphasizes a

holistic analysis of the patient’s complete visual system, including the environmental stressors

placed upon that system.  

From this behavioral perspective, a patient’s visual system includes “perception,

cognition, memory, and imagery . . .” (Press 1997: x), and these processes work in conjunction

with all of the senses, not just that of sight.  Behavioral optometrists often incorporate therapy

into the treatment process because they recognize that patients can improve their vision by

enhancing their information acquisition and processing skills.  As one of the behavioral

optometrists I interviewed commented: “You see with your brain; you don’t see with your eyes.” 

Vision relies upon information gathered both presently and previously from the other senses —

memory contributes to interpretation of a light stimulus; the deemed importance of a stimulus

also affects its interpretation by the visual system (Hendrickson 1989: 3-4).  

Non-behavioral optometrists intimately understand the human visual system, but they do

not usually prescribe therapeutic treatments based upon this knowledge; behavioral optometrists,

on the other hand, regularly do.  For example, behavioral optometrists will prescribe vision

therapy regimens to help patients overcome strabismus (eye-turns), vision-related learning

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difficulties, or traumatic brain injury.  They will also prescribe VT regimens to help patients

prevent or postpone the onset of vision difficulties — such as myopia developed from protracted

work in a constricted environment.  

An interviewed optometrist offered an example of the complexity of the visual system as

seen from a behavioral optometrist’s standpoint.  He described the difficulties one can encounter

in reading and processing written material: “If I cannot see what I’m looking at and where I am

to look next, and do this simultaneously, I’m going to lose my place.”  To read and comprehend

what we read, we must process information on two separate levels: central identification and

peripheral localization.  This optometrist calls the necessary peripheral processing component

“making contact with context.”  Routine eye exams, however, do not test for this type of visual

information processing. 

Before attributing the exclusion of behavioral optometry from managed care settings to

its non-standardizable approach or its overlap with conventional medicine, the question of its

efficacy should be explored.  Vision therapy finds its origins in a field dedicated to the

straightening of the eyes — orthoptics.  As early as mid-nineteenth century, French

ophthalmologist Javal was utilizing non-invasive orthoptic therapy with success, and the field

persists to this day (Press 1997: 2).  Managed care has embraced orthoptics and

ophthalmological therapy-related eye treatments but not optometric VT.

Nonetheless, the research on optometric VT reveals some astounding results.  For

example, Wold et al. (1978) have documented the response rate of one-hundred consecutive

vision therapy patients to a standardized eye-movement performance test.  Prior to VT, only 6%

of the tested children passed the eye movement portion of this test; after VT 96% were able to

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pass (Press 1997: 348).  In another case, Fujimoto et al. (1985) conducted a controlled clinical

trial to test saccadic fixation training.  (Saccades are rapid eye movements that assist in reading

and similar activities.)  The groups that underwent VT showed a statistically significant

improvement in saccadic fixation over those who did not (Press 1997: 348).  In a controlled

study of pursuit eye movements (smooth eye movements used for tracking moving objects),

Busby (1985) found a significant improvement among special education students who underwent

VT:

The subjects were rated on their ability to maintain fixation on a moving target.  The

rating procedure was shown to have a high interrater reliability.  The results showed

statistically significant improvement by the experimental group in pursuit eye movement

and persistence of the therapeutic effect on retesting at a 3-month interval after

conclusion of the therapy.  (Press 1997: 348)

Many similar controlled experiments citing the efficacy of VT have been published in

Journal of the American Optometric Association

, 

Journal of Behavioral Optometry

, and 

Journal

of Optometric Vision Development

.  Additionally, a number of reviews of the literature on the

efficacy of optometric VT have been compiled (Flax & Duckman 1978; Press 1988; Suchoff &

Petito 1986;  Cohen, Lowe, Steele, et al. 1988).  These examples document, through many

controlled experiments, the efficacy of optometric VT.  If managed care knows of this research

literature and still excludes optometric VT from its range of services, then other explanations

must account for this exclusion.      

B. New Manifestations of an Old Rivalry: Ophthalmologists vs. Optometrists

Because of vision therapy’s documented efficacy, an explanation of behavioral

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optometry’s exclusion from managed care plans must consider institutional factors.  The rivalry

between ophthalmologists and optometrists first surfaced at the end of the nineteenth century in

America when optometrists, who were then called “refracting opticians” (as opposed to

“dispensing opticians”), moved to form a legally recognized profession.  Ophthalmologists

perceived this emerging profession as a threat to their livelihoods and fought to prevent its

formation.  The most outspoken ophthalmologist of the time, D. B. St. John Roosa, M.D., even

threatened to have proponents of optometric professionalization jailed (Cox 1957: 34).  Roosa

justified such an extreme position by arguing that refracting opticians who were charging

patients for this service lacked the medical background and medical licensing necessary to treat

patients.  In other words, Roosa felt that opticians of the day should remain within their trade

organization and make spectacles for the populace; if opticians wanted to refract (that is, to

diagnose the prescription patients required), then Roosa believed they should undertake the

necessary medical schooling and obtain an M.D..  In spite of ophthalmology’s professional status

and close relationship to the American Medical Association at the time, ophthalmologists were

unable to prevent legislation legalizing optometry as a profession (Miller & Brown 1996: 32).

Many ophthalmologists and optometrists have since developed close working

relationships based upon mutual respect (Glenn 1998; Freeman 1997), but the fiscal challenges

that MCOs push upon these professions have also reignited the old disputes over medical

qualifications (Press 1997: 362-65).  One interviewee commented that in environments where

fiscal considerations are absent, such as in the VA hospital system, the two professions often

work quite amiably together; however, “Where the dollars come in, . . . [they] look at each other

primarily as competitors versus colleagues.”

Despite vision therapy’s efficacy, behavioral optometrists have not gained prominence

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over the vision care field.  The non-research origins of behavioral optometry may contribute to

this lack of widespread acceptance.  At the inception of behavioral optometry with A.M.

Skeffington’s teachings in the late 1920s, these optometrists existed mainly outside of academic

research environments.  Behavioral optometrists, in other words, were primarily practitioners

prescribing therapy regimens that they found effective.  In the last couple of decades, behavioral

optometrists have documented more of their findings in research literature; nonetheless,

behavioral optometry’s long absence from educational research settings has confounded the

profession’s ability to justify their treatments to MCOs.  Ophthalmologists, in contrast, have

used their medical standing to lobby MCOs for financial support of their opposing treatments. 

As David Hess notes in his research on alternative theories of cancer etiology, ideas excluded by

the mainstream medical community, regardless of their veracity, become characterized as

pseudoscience (Hess 1997: 77).  Therefore, the refusal by the medical community to

acknowledge the validity of existing research on VT also influences MCOs to ignore that

literature.

Leonard J. Press, a Fellow of  College of Optometrist in Vision Development (COVD),

discusses the politics of ophthalmology and behavioral optometry research in his book 

Applied

Concepts in Vision Therapy 

(1997).  Press asserts that managed care’s emphasis on cost

containment pressures the medical community to doubt publically the efficacy of the competing

treatments of vision therapy: “The American Medical Association has classified visual training

as an ‘alternative’ health method” (Press 1997: 363) that is both unproven and unscientific.  

Press observes the hypocrisy in such claims by the medical community when much of their

research does not hold up to the scientific criteria they use to evaluate VT (when they choose to

acknowledge VT’s existence at all): 

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A survey of clinical ophthalmology reveals that several of its procedures have gained

acceptance before scientific studies supported their efficacy . . . Strabismus surgery is a

prime example of a procedure that originated as cosmetic experimentation on patients

that was presented as a therapeutic modality, reinforced by medical referral patterns, and

reimbursed with little challenge by third party providers.  (363)

Ophthalmology appears to have a privileged relationship with insurance providers that cannot be

explained strictly in terms of its superior medical research.  One of my interviewees sumed up

the situation: 

The health professions . . . have been dominated by medical practice.  And medical

practice has never taught or learned or done anything in the fields of vision training.  So

not knowing about it, they pooh-pooh it . . . and in doing such, they’re also controlling

the insurance companies, telling them [that it is not valid].

The inconsistencies in the medical community’s condemnation of VT extends even

further when one realizes that ophthalmologists prescribe VT regimens under the euphemistic

label of “functional ophthalmology” for their treatment of patients with convergence

insufficiency (difficulty in getting both eyes to turn in) (Press 1997: 365).  Evidently, the

American Medical Association only applies the term “alternative medicine” to VT treatments

prescribed by someone other than a doctor of medicine. 

Press moves beyond rationales of scientific validity to raise alternate reasons for

ophthalmology’s uneasiness with VT.  MCOs hold all optometrists to the educational standards

of ophthalmologists, in terms of an advanced understanding of disease, pharmacology, and

anatomy, as a condition for reimbursement; ophthalmologists, on the other hand, have had little

incentive to attain an understanding of the visual system on par with behavioral optometrists. 

Monahan 17

One could conclude that ophthalmologists now perceive a threat to their patient base.  A

discussion in the 

Transactions of the American Ophthalmological Society

 articulates this fear:

“‘Many ophthalmologists do not fully appreciate the role and function of the process of

accommodation and convergence, their interrelationship, and how to study their dysfunctions. 

Thus proper treatment is not given.  Many of these patients end up under the care of

optometrists’” (cited in Press 1997: 364).  Instead of expanding their education into the realm of

behavioral optometry, ophthalmologists have responded by attacking the scientific validity of

VT prescribed by optometrists.  An interviewee observed: 

Vision therapy is a unique service.  It’s not easy to do — you get picked on by the

medical community who works against you and who doesn’t buy into what we do.  A lot

of it’s just turf battle; a lot of it’s philosophical battle . . . [VT’s] probably one of the best

kept secrets in health care.  

Thus, the managed care environment catalyzes turf battles similar to those that occurred between

ophthalmologists and optometrists at the turn of the century.  

Interestingly, this marginalization of VT treatments by the American medical community

does not find its parallel on the international level.  A survey of both the American Association

for Pediatric Ophthalmology and Strabismus and the International Strabismological Association

reveals that the “international group used nonsurgical treatments much more frequently (85% vs.

52%)” (Press 1997: 365).  The author of this survey, Paul Romano, M.D., postulates three main

reasons for the variation in his findings between American physicians and their international

counterparts: 1) Non-U.S. insurance companies compensate less for eye surgery and employ

stricter criteria for pretreatment approval; 2) U.S. surgeons risk losing more money with non-

surgical treatments because most do not have therapy facilities in-office; 3) U.S. surgeons fear

Monahan 18

that, because they lack training in vision therapy, if they acknowledge the efficacy of VT, they

will lose patients to optometrists and orthopticists (365).  It follows that the economic concerns

of ophthalmologists in the U.S. provide them with sufficient reasons for using their medical

community clout to convince MCOs of the questionable efficacy of optometric VT.  

Nonetheless, MCOs would most likely save money in the long run if they provided

reimbursement for VT treatments in favor of ophthalmological treatments of the same

conditions.  In diagnoses of convergence insufficiency, for example, patients may experience

symptoms that completely incapacitate them: “headache, browaches, neck pain, dizziness,

intermittent double vision, and blurring of vision” (365).  Over a period of time, treatment of

these symptoms with prescription drugs or lenses, coupled with the cost of diagnostic tests, will

cost much more to MCOs than vision therapy.  The vision therapy of orthoptics for treating

convergence insufficiency costs less than treating its symptoms or defaulting to surgery; Press

warns that if one foregoes VT, convergence insufficiency sometimes requires multiple surgeries

to correct (365).  An interviewee emphasized that for this particular condition, which is “the

number one, non-refractive, eye problem in the country, . . . Research has shown that the number

one treatment for this condition is vision therapy, and its success rate is phenomenal — 85-95%

depending on the paper that you read.”

If VT treatments for convergence insufficiency and for other visual problems are so

effective and can save MCOs money in the long run, why do MCOs not challenge the medical

community’s verdict on optometric VT?  For one, MCOs and third party insurance providers

may simply be unaware of the extant research on VT efficacy.  The mainstream, conservative

medical community also currently influences MCOs, and according to one interviewee:

“[MCOs] have their own agenda, and they’re not looking for a new agenda.” Moreover, MCOs

Monahan 19

have tied themselves into a corporate-like businesses structure that emphasizes short-term

economic gain; this structural constraint may prevent them selecting long-term, holistic

treatments for their members even if they did acknowledge both the efficacy of such treatments

and the long-term economic gain they would stand to make by sanctioning those treatments. 

C. The Insurance Coverage Challenge

Where conventional optometry encounters difficulty in dealing with managed care,

behavioral optometrists seeking reimbursement for their patients face even greater challenges.  

Most major medical insurance companies and managed care organizations (MCOs) classify

vision therapy as an alternative and unreliable medical practice.  Major medical insurance

companies will occasionally offer partial coverage for VT, but according to my research, MCOs

rarely reimburse for VT.  The lack of managed care coverage for the vision therapy treatments

often prescribed by behavioral optometrists deters many patients from seeking out these

services.  By controlling behavioral optometry’s patient base in this manner, managed care

organizations, operating in close, established relationships with mainstream medical

practitioners, ensure the continued marginalization of behavioral optometry.

While MCOs will not reimburse for vision therapy, behavioral optometrists can often

convince other major medical providers, like Blue Cross or Blue Shield, to offer partial patient

reimbursement for VT.  According to one optometrist interviewed, when patients have access to

managed care 

and

 a third-party, major medical provider, managed care will cover the “non-

medical” or “vision care” part of the evaluation, and the major medical will usually cover the

medical component of the evaluation.  This same interviewee related that “vision care” typically

refers to an “assessment of refractive error and the prescribing of glasses or contact lenses.”  The

Monahan 20

medical eye-care classification, on the other hand, serves as a catch-all for any other treatments

(secondary examinations of different visual functions or vision therapy, for example).

Oftentimes, patients and physicians must argue with major medical providers for

reimbursement on the therapy component of treatment, but this interviewee expressed

confidence in the effects of these contestations in getting at least part of the therapy covered.  In

sum, patients with the luxury of managed care and major medical coverage can, with great

effort, get reimbursed for most examinations and some VT. 

Patients who are only covered by managed care medical plans, such as HMOs, have little

luck in getting secondary examinations (to test visual functions with greater accuracy) or VT

covered at all, even if they and their doctors challenge the MCOs with scientific literature citing

the efficacy of VT.  An interviewed optometrist related: “Most of the [managed care] groups that

I’ve seen are primarily concerned about cost effectiveness and not necessarily concerned about

quality . . . They want the quick fix.  They want it done as inexpensively as possible, or they

don’t want it done.”  In these situations, the burden of payment falls entirely upon the patient. 

One interviewee capitulates to MCOs in these instances: “We make it very clear to [the patient]

that [VT] is not a covered service and that if they want to try to fight the insurance company,

they have to do so on there own.”  Patients usually cover their own expenses in these instances. 

Those added patient expenses prevent behavioral optometry’s growth and widespread

acceptance: costs deter some of the already small minority of patients aware of this vision care

option.  

One can trace MCOs’ reluctance to cover VT back to a complicated web of economic

and political forces.  On an economic level, MCOs avoid covering any type of open-ended

therapy because these therapies might turn into extended and costly treatments.  MCOs value

Monahan 21

short-term treatments, such as lens prescription, over holistic long-term ones, such as VT, for

counterintuitive reasons.  They do not place primary importance upon long-term economic

considerations — VT can save MCOs money in the long-run through prevention of visual

difficulties.  The behavior of MCOs indicates that they fear long-term commitment to patients

and loss of control over treatment options more than loss of capital.  An interviewee provided an

example of this that nicely transitions to the political realm of MCOs’ reluctance to cover VT:

Even though we can show a higher success rate [than ophthalmological treatments] and

less cost on treating certain problems like strabismus . . . at a fraction of the cost, it

doesn’t fit into [MCOs’] model of treatment.  So, they’d rather pay many thousands of

dollars for a surgical procedure that has a 43% success rate, rather than pay half of that

for vision therapy cause that’s going to require six months of visits — even though we

have an 85% success rate.

This example illustrates the control aspect of MCOs’ behavior; they would prefer to

ignore medical literature citing the efficacy of VT because if they condoned VT treatments, they

would lose control over the details of that treatment.  They would have to address vision

problems on behavioral optometrists’ terms and acknowledge that treatment of patients depends

upon the unique attributes of each patient’s visual system and environmental activities.  Such an

acknowledgment would require MCOs to cede some control to behavioral optometrists. 

Refractive surgery by ophthalmologists, on the other hand, is a fairly clear-cut procedure; not

much holistic evaluation of the patient’s visual system is required.  VT treatment of that same

patient depends upon the subjective evaluation, by a behavioral optometrist, of that patient’s

entire visual system.  Of course, behavioral optometrists use all the traditional fact-finding

techniques that other optometrists use, namely the twenty-one point exam, but they supplement

Monahan 22

examinations with other tests when they suspect a vision difficulty.  Behavioral optometrists

then develop a VT treatment regimen that incorporates an added component to this analytic

appraisal.  I should also point out that VT and surgery are not mutually exclusive procedures;

many optometrists and ophthalmologists work together to treat such patients, but the long-term

rivalry between these two professions complicates these collaborative treatment efforts

(Freeman 1997).

Implications for American Health Care Ideologies and Practices

Managed care excludes behavioral optometry for two main reasons: behavioral

optometry’s individualized, non-standardizable vision therapy treatments and its threat to

existing conventional medicine (ophthalmology).  As illustrated in the section on managed care

and conventional optometry, quick technological fixes and commodified health care (through

corrective lens prescriptions) effectively discourage patients from guarding their visual health;

more and more, optometrists must depend on dispensing glasses in order to sustain their

businesses.  This is not to say that optometrists prescribe lenses unnecessarily, only that patients

may never be exposed to behavioral optometric techniques for preventing the loss of visual

functions.  Patients may come to perceive vision deterioration as a given, something that they

have no control over.  In fact, I believe that this is the case for most Americans.  This resignation

to the inevitability of vision loss is accompanied by an increased dependence on technological

solutions to vision deterioration.  In essence, many Americans are blindly abdicating

responsibility for their health to technology. 

In cases where managed care provides coverage for ophthalmological surgery but fails to

cover non-invasive therapy options, the impact upon social health care ideologies may be even

Monahan 23

greater.  Take, for example, the use of strabismus surgery to correct misalignment of the eyes. 

VT has been shown to succeed 65-91% of the time depending on the type of strabismus treated

(Ziegler et al. 1982).  Despite VT’s efficacy in treating strabismus or its documented benefits as

a complementary, post-surgery modality, some ophthalmologists consider VT downright

dangerous for their strabismus patients (Press 1997: 102).  

Managed care’s decision to cover strabismus surgery but not VT conveys a message to

patients and health care practitioners that only quick solutions to health problems count.  In

these cases, surgical artifacts (scalpels or lasers) and instrumental techniques gain supremacy

over any active, personal investment in one’s own health.  However, these patients relinquish

even more control over their own health than those depending upon corrective lenses: strabismus

patients risk irreversible damage through surgery in lieu of completely reversible VT.  It seems

unlikely that patients and physicians subscribing to these health care ideologies do not

internalize some of the values implicit within these ideologies.  In other words, they begin to

value technological artifacts and place increasing faith in them; at the same time, they devalue

investing time and effort to maintain their own health.  

Quick technological solutions to vision difficulties, such surgery or corrective lenses,

coupled with the technocratization of optometric practices under managed care systems reflect

and inform deeper societal attitudes about health care.  Vision therapy requires people to take

responsibility for their own visual health; surgery and lens prescriptions send messages to

patients that they need not guard their sense of sight — technology will fix their “errors.”  These

quick technological solutions contribute to the inactivity and passivity of people, becoming what

Foucault termed “docile bodies.”  The rapid treatment of patients in assembly-line style, which

is encouraged and in some cases enforced by managed care programs, also hinders the

Monahan 24

development of doctor-patient relationships (Cram 1997; Thurston 1996): communications

between doctors and patients become extraneous interactions.  In these situations, readings from

technological instruments take precedence over verbal exchanges.  

Behavioral optometrists are working to educate MCOs about the efficacy of VT, but they

frequently encounter resistance from disbelieving M.D.s sitting on the quality assessment and

utilization committees of MCOs (Wright 1997).  Ironically, managed care programs may be

suffering from myopia in not recognizing that in many cases VT is more cost-efficient than the

quick technological fixes of surgery or corrective lenses.

The case of behavioral optometry provides unique insight into the forces and values

influencing managed care decisions on the incorporation of complementary alternative medicine

(CAM).  When alternative medicine conflicts with extant conventional medical practice (that is,

when it is not just complementary), managed care will most likely exclude it.  When randomized

controlled trials exist for alternative treatments and those treatments are standardizable,

managed care will most likely incorporate those treatments to be administered by current care-

givers.  Ophthalmologists practicing vision therapy under the rubric of “functional

ophthalmology” is an example of this.  Finally, when an alternative treatment is individualized

yet does not conflict with conventional medicine, managed care may incorporate it as long as the

treatment saves money.  The incorporation of acupuncture by HMOs for the treatment of chronic

pain is an example of this (Patton 1997).

  These types of decisions pose some threats that should be guarded against.  Those

interested in maintaining the integrity of CAM in managed care settings should fight against

standardization that risks the loss of holistic assessments; managed care may corrupt these

treatments by only using portions of them that do not conflict with existing conventional

Monahan 25

treatments.  Those interested in obtaining the best possible health care from managed care

providers should demand that options for less threatening treatments not be kept from them for

reasons other than efficacy and cost.  Finally, we should all strive against internalizing a

corporate model of health care that increases our dependence upon technology at the expense of

personal autonomy. 

Monahan 26

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