Author response: what to do about racial disparities in access to glasses among children in the US?

The recent editorial appearing in IOVS entitled ‘‘What to do about racial disparities in access to glasses among children in the US?" omitted an important consideration. When the article called for the United States to ‘‘guarantee all children access to basic, inexpensive spectacles,’’ it failed to reference an important new part of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) highly relevant to the goal of improving access to eyeglasses for all children who need them. The essential vision benefit of the ACA, in fact, guarantees access to eye examinations, and in most cases, eyeglasses, for most children in the country. This represents an important step forward and should have been mentioned in the editorial. Some limitations of this important new legislation deserve mention too: