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Notes -
A number of degrees and licenses have prescribing rights in the U.S. right now (including NPs and PAs in most states).
Keep in mind that an overwhelming fraction of the population will prescribe themselves into bad outcomes if given the ability to do so, and often demand that their providers do so (with variable success).
Antibiotics as you note, is the classic example. People will demand antibiotics for viral infections. They will demand antibiotics when they don't need them. They will demand stronger antibiotics. They'll blow up their tendons or give themselves C Diff or one of any other number of things.
People will take thyroid medication wrong, or even easy to avoid fucking up things like most blood pressure medication. They'll take two medications that are fine alone but will fuck up your kidneys together.
Patients are idiots. That includes high education, high intelligence patients because they have a lot of overconfidence (just as doctors have overconfidence in domains outside of medicines).
But most people aren't high education and high intelligence anyway and you'll get a ton of people killed and cause extremely expensive, avoidable morbidity if you take the guardrails away.
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