California is trying an ‘end run’ around their future Doctor shortages by redefining who can be considered a ‘primary care provider’. As California State Senator Ed Hernandez (D) says, “What good is it if they are going to have a health insurance card but no access to Doctors?”.
This “redefining what is a Doctor” dictum, is nothing new. This is an expedient solution reached by all socialist societies with government health programs; for dispensing sub-standard medical care to the populace, and calling it equal to the ‘real’ health care, that is then ultimately only dispensed to that society’s ruling political and corporatist elite, the new aristocracy.
California State’s ‘Progressive’ lawmakers, are indeed working on legislation that would permit PA’s & NP’s as mid-levels, to set up independent practices; Pharmacists and Optometrists to act as “primary care” providers; and even public school teachers to be “trained” as mental health and behavioral health diagnosticians; in order to address psychiatric problems in “public ‘school-based’ healthcare centers.”
These lesser trained PCP role changes, like that which the State of California is trying to enact, could be common in the age of Obamacare; but will be largely unfunded mandates, that will dilute the public healthcare dollar, and insure inadequate care and treatment of those among the general public who become sick.
Ultimately, this lowering of public health care standards, creates a resultant ever-increasing disproportionate level of access, dispensed care, and quality health outcomes, between those corporate & political elites (who receive the best), versus the lower levels of increasingly rationed health care provided to the common person.