No subspecialty is immune to cuts. If cataract fees do get a massive cut, the good thing about comp is the ability to move towards and “justify” 3rd party services (premium IOLs, RLE, etc). Additionally, experience with “light” subspecialty work gives you access to more lucrative procedures of subspecialists, including glaucoma lasers, and intravitreal injections in many places, without the need to follow complicated cases that are “beyond your scope”, which you can refer on. I would argue that these flexibilities allow comprehensive ophthalmologists to weather the cuts better at the end, since cataract surgery only makes up about 20% of a typical comprehensive ophthalmologists’ practice. Also don’t forget that the actual surgery often isn’t the biggest part of the reimbursement (there are also out of pocket diagnostic fees such as optical biometry and topography, and usually YAG capsulotomy on a third to a half of your patients, depending on how aggressive you are).
As I see it, the narrower the focus of your practice, the more vulnerable you are. I would be more worried about being medical retina and seeing literally cuts to just 2 fee codes (OCT, intravitreal injection) have a huge effect on 100% of my bottom line.