Supreme Court rules against N.C. dental board in tooth-whitening case

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The Dental board responded that because it was a state agency, it was immune from antitrust laws, an argument that didn't sway the FTC, the lower court or the Supreme Court.

In his opinion, Kennedy sided with the FTC in saying that the board was not immune from antitrust action because it was not actively supervised by the state.

Kennedy said that the Sherman Antitrust Act "does not authorize the States to abandon markets to the unsupervised control of active market participants, whether trade associations or hybrid agencies."

The ruling is likely to have an impact on other bodies, such as those that oversee lawyers, nurses and doctors, by stripping some of their authority.
 
dentists who have done a dental anesthesia residency could potentially have a lot more independence as well
 
In-office bleaching has about the level of complexity of placing an IV. You can teach any tech to do it in a day. Heck, patients do it at home, with their own trays. The important part is just to isolate the hydrogen peroxide from the soft tissues. So I agree with the Supreme Court here.

I also agree with the idea that this can be used against (medical) boards that are egregiously and unfoundedly restricting midlevel practice.

On the other hand, AFAIK, CRNAs can already practice independently in most states. So why don't they? This might spell way more trouble for other specialties than for anesthesia.
 
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medical boards are not restricting APN trade. State law, customer preference, and institutional policies are.
 
medical boards are not restricting APN trade. State law, customer preference, and institutional policies are.

Exactly, APN's are under the nursing board. Medical boards can lobby for or against particular laws dealing with scope of practice but they can't define the scope of practice of an APN.

With that said, you never know what the future repercussions will be when the courts set precedence on major issues like this.
 
From Alitos Dissent:


"Not only is the Court’s decision inconsistent with the underlying theory of Parker; it will create practical prob- lems and is likely to have far-reaching effects on the States’ regulation of professions. As previously noted, state medical and dental boards have been staffed by practitioners since they were first created, and there are obvious advantages to this approach. It is reasonable for States to decide that the individuals best able to regulate technical professions are practitioners with expertise in those very professions. Staffing the State Board of Dental Examiners with certified public accountants would cer- tainly lessen the risk of actions that place the well-being of dentists over those of the public, but this would also com- promise the State’s interest in sensibly regulating a tech- nical profession in which lay people have little expertise.As a result of today’s decision, States may find it neces- sary to change the composition of medical, dental, and other boards, but it is not clear what sort of changes are needed to satisfy the test that the Court now adopts. The Court faults the structure of the North Carolina Board because “active market participants” constitute “a control- ling number of [the] decisionmakers,” ante, at 14, but this test raises many questions."
 
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