Health care providers might be able to expand the supply of care quickly and easily – if regulators encourage use of nurse practitioners and other mid-level health professionals.

Three economists – Thomas Buchmueller, Sarah Miller and Marko Vujicic – come to that conclusion in an informal working paper published behind a paywall on the National Bureau of Economic Research's website.

Buchmueller, a professor at the University of Michigan business school, and his colleagues, studied the flexibility of the supply of health care in this country by looking at what happened when some states dramatically expanded access to Medicaid dental benefits.

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Allison Bell

Allison Bell, a senior reporter at ThinkAdvisor and BenefitsPRO, previously was an associate editor at National Underwriter Life & Health. She has a bachelor's degree in economics from Washington University in St. Louis and a master's degree in journalism from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. She can be reached through X at @Think_Allison.