Congress, at the behest of AMA lobbying, had kept the number of Medicare funded residency slots capped at the same number since 1997 until the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021 which added 1000 new residence slots[0]. Starting in FY 2023 (October 1 2022) no more than 200 new positions would be added each FY meaning the full 1000 could be created no sooner than FY 2028 (October 1 2027). Given the medical school timeline of 7-10 years training (school, residency, fellowship) we won't see any meaningful impact from that until the mid 2030s.

The US already has a much lower physician to patient ratio than Nordic countries (as a comparison between wealthy, western countries). The us has 2.97 active physicians per 1000 population, of which 2.52 are actual direct patient care physicians[2]. For comparison Sweden is ~5 per 1,000, Norway 4.5 per 1,000, Denmark 4.45 per 1,000, and Finland at 3.8 per 1000. Extra Bonus (Russian Federation reports 4.0 per 1,000)[3]. Note these numbers are as of 2020.

In America, most people interface with doctors in order to get tests run and medicine prescribed. Reducing the incentive for RNs to move into NP by removing it's professional degree status will likely lower the amount of prescribing individuals a patient can interface with, increasing bottleneck and time to care.

[0] - https://www.sgu.edu/news-and-events/new-residency-slots-appr... [1] - https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8370355/ [2] - https://www.aamc.org/data-reports/data/2023-key-findings-and... [3] - https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/countries-with-the-most-...