Nurses, dentists and psychologists asked the Illinois Legislature this spring for more authority to make medical decisions with demand expected to surge under the federal health care law, but each time lawmakers sided with doctors and turned them down. It was a resounding victory in Springfield for the Illinois State Medical Society, which has represented doctors in a longstanding turf battle over how to address a growing shortage of medical services in rural and low-income urban neighborhoods across the state. Nurses and other medical providers argued they could help ease the burden if given more control, but in lobbying hard to defeat or gut those proposals the doctor's group argued they lacked proper qualifications.
