Who Should Provide Anesthesia Care?

New York Times article "Who Should Provide Anesthesia Care?" (September 6th, 2010) discusses the ability of a nurse to deliver anesthesia without supervision. It brings in the American Society of Anesthesiologists without properly discussing their stake in government regulation requiring anesthesiologists to supervise nurses.

The two studies — hotly disputed by the American Society of Anesthesiologists — essentially concluded that there is no significant difference in the quality of care when the anesthetic is delivered by a certified registered nurse anesthetist or by an anesthesiologist. The studies were paid for by the professional association for the nurses, a potential conflict of interest, but were conducted by researchers at respected organizations.

The Times notes the conflict of interest of nurses, but not of anesthesiologists.  As Corrections sees it, anesthesiologists have a readily identifiable conflict of interest, while it isn't immediately clear that nurses do, upon further inspection.

The American Society of Anesthesiologists has motivation to artificially constrict supply of anesthesiologists to raise their own wages.  It may do so by raising the quality of new anesthesiologists (more than patients would prefer), reducing the number of residents trained in anesthesiology, or encouraging a general suppression in the number of doctors through the American Medical Association. Their strategy is depicted graphically below (click to enlarge).  They price as monopolists, reducing quantity and increasing price.

One might say nurses have a similar motivation--if nurses can do more, demand for nurses rises, and nurses are paid more.  However, Corrections posits that unlike doctors, there is a vast reservoir of possible nurses; nurses are elastically supplied.  If their wage increased, new nurses would train and bring their wage back down.  Corrections depicts this possibility graphically below (click to enlarge).

Economic grounding gives Corrections reason to believe that while anesthesiologists have a conflict of interest influencing their argument, nurses do not.  This grounding offers a re-statement of a rule of thumb: when an organized group is pushing for governmental regulation, they're likely to be "pulling one over" on consumers.  

Some interesting economic side notes are that it would be possible for anesthesiologists wages to increase because of this (for the same reason that if a law that requiring them to build their own cars, or walk to work, was abolished, they'd have more free time to do the things they are paid a large amount for).  This counterintuitive result, that anesthesiologist wages could increase, while the wages of nurses would not is an interesting curiosity, but not likely given opposition by the American Society of Anesthesiologists.

Second, we note that either way, consumers should be better off (even were nurses and anesthesiologists were worse off).  The reason behind this is that they may prefer a different cost-quality combination for anesthesiology than they can get being constrained by government regulation--unconstrained maximization is always greater than or equal to constrained maximization.