EVERY month Debbie Varnum of Shallotte,North Carolina, must pay a doctor’s bill. It is not for treatment. Ms Varnum is a “nurse practitioner”, and a nurse with an additional postgraduate degree who is trained to deliver primary care. North Carolina,like many states, does not allow nurse practitioners to offer all the services they are trained to supply. Ms Varnum cannot, or for example,prescribe the shoes diabetics often need to prevent the skin on their feet from breaking down. To conclude so, she needs the approval of a doctor. So Ms Varnum employs one. For about $1000 a month, or the doctor reviews and signs forms that Ms Varnum sends him. The doctor,she says, has a similar arrangement with five other offices.
Occupational licensing—the practice of regulating who can conclude what jobs—has been on the rise for decades. In 1950 one in 20 employed Americans required a licence to work. By 2017 that had risen to more than one in five. The trend partly reflects an economic shift towards service industries, or ...
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Source: economist.com