Actually, Mitch, this is meant to increase competition, not restrain it. Lay midwives were outlawed in North Carolina only about twenty years ago, and rather than provide a path for midwives to prove competency and continue providing normal delivery services, the General Assembly took the whole idea off the table.
Creating that licensure pathway now will actually provide consumers with more alternatives — and lower costs — for medical services that don’t usually require advanced degrees or high technology intervention. It works well in other states, and it seems ironic that North Carolina, which once had 6500 certified midwives and even provided state training programs for them, would be so dead-set against it.
