This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Monday, January 30th, 2023.

I'm Caleb Brown.

When it comes to accessing health care, things weren't exactly great before the pandemic.

And of course, the pandemic caused access problems to get much worse.

Perhaps part of the solution to the ongoing problem is giving nurse practitioners

the ability to practice on their own.

For many eastern states, nurse practitioners are especially

restricted. Elizabeth Stell is with Pennsylvania's Commonwealth Foundation. She details the results

of their new study.

Well, in health care, when you talk about improving it we

have to hear about public options but we would say how do you create a personal

option because what people really want is more personal

health care and so when we talk about how to make health care more personal we

talk about access and one thing we've been working on in Pennsylvania for a long time

with friends like Americans for Prosperity.

This report we did with the Knee Center in West Virginia University is increasing

the supply of health care. Because you have more health care providers, you can have more personalized attention, you can have more access to your provider.

So this is really what the scope of practice reform is all about.

It's increasing the supply of health care so that you can get more personalized care and therefore higher

quality care.

Okay, so what what do we learn from your study on the scope of practice reform.

Well, what we learned is what we found is exactly what we expect to find,

...