The health care industry seems to be profiting off this by having more care provided by nurse practitioners and physician assistants but billing the insurers same as they would charge for M.D./D.Os.
Medicare and most insurance strictly control this.
But the industry benefits from a constrained supply of doctors because it means less competition; laws ultimately require doctors to be in charge of a practice. Some laws are now even restricting the number of PA/NP's that can be supervised, but it's not a strong effect.
Some states permit NP's to practice without a physician, but PA's all require a supervising physician.
PA's no longer require a supervising physician. Also why do people seem to think PAs and NPs are equivalent? PA's have 4x the clinical experience/ training that NPs have. 2000 hours vs 500 and MDs at 4000.
This implies PAs are at half the level of an MD but the difference is astronomical. Those 4000 MD hours are training to be a physician, the 2000 are training to be a PA which is a much simpler role. If PA school went to 8000h doing what they do currently to train wouldn’t get you near an MD (not to mention the talent of the intake, rigour of exams and depth/ breadth of knowledge required).
“With this move, Iowa joins five states that have removed the legally mandated relationship between physician assistants and doctors, according to the American Academy of Physician Associates.”
They carefully maintain the scarcity of doctors, but import as many nurses as they possibly can, work them hard, and pay them the least they can get away with. It's only logical.
