The author is a nut job. It’s not about competition. Trusting your child’s health to evening and weekend medical clinics staffed by nurse practioners is foolishness. They don’t know your child’s medical history, don’t know what’s abnormal for your child, and are only treating the symptoms present at the moment.
If you establish a long-term relationship with your child’s pediatrician, they will take your phone call after hours and prescribe medicine/treatment or tell you that it’s serious enough for a trip to the ER - if you can’t figure that out on your own.
Though I did have an experience with my daughter where she had a very sore throat for an extended period. We thought she had strep throat. I took her to the Walgreens clinic. The nurse practitioner swabbed a sample to confirm it was strep. She did not want to prescribe antibiotics without first confirming that.
So we went back home and my daughter continued to complain about her throat. The next day my wife threw a fit and insisted that we take her to the ER. They saw her and dutifully wrote a prescription for antibiotics.
She finished her course of meds. Her throat still hurt. The labwork from Walgreens came back negative for strep.
Seems the nurse practitioner at the drug store was thorough in doing her job. The doctor at the ER just wrote us a scrip to get us the heck out of the building.