Jessica Oberoi, 13, can’t exactly remember when her eyesight started getting blurry. All she knows is that she had to squint to see the whiteboard at school. It wasn’t until last fall when her eighth grade class in Bloomington, Indiana, got vision screenings that Jessica’s extreme nearsightedness and amblyopia, or lazy eye, were discovered. She’s
Eye exams for children are required under federal law to be covered by most private health plans and Medicaid, and many states mandate school vision screenings.
More than 600,000 children and teens are blind or have a vision disorder, according to the CDC, and a large number of these children could be helped simply with glasses. But because of high costs and lack of insurance coverage, many are not getting that help. The National Survey of Children’s Health found that in 2016-17 a quarter of children were not regularly screened for vision problems.