The AMA does not issue licenses to people with an associates degree who are happy to make $60k writing prescriptions for a single cycle of antibiotics to customers who choose this level of care. We are instead forced, as it were, to hire a nuclear physicist to install a light switch. We need nuclear physicists to design power plants, but not very many of them. Folks with an associates degree can install a light switch just fine....But if I CHOOSE to WASTE my money and hire a physicist to install my switch I can, because it is a free country.
We need brain surgeons, too, just not to prescribe a single course of antibiotics for an ear infection or something.
For that matter why should one need a prescription to purchase an antibiotic or almost as highly trained pharmacist to dispense one. Deregulate prescription drugs so that they may be purchased over the counter drug chains could maintain a staff pharmacist available by satellite video in their local store. With the pharmacists happily consulting from their home computers in regards to potential interactions etc. Most pharmacies already print out everything you might ever need to know to go with the drug. A paramedic or nurse could set up shop if you had no idea what to take. Save the doctors for the hard stuff. That’s one reason why the same pills are cheaper out of US because they do not have the excessive regulation.