COVID forced all states, including Connecticut, to grant far greater leeway to patients and providers in managing care. Physicians could practice across state lines, restrictions on telehealth were dropped, nurse practitioners and other nonphysician providers were granted greater power to treat patients, and hospitals no longer had to beg the permission of states to offer new services. The emergency allowed states to serve as “laboratories of democracy,” and in doing so, all Americans participated in an enormous, unplanned scientific experiment.
They are not laboratories of anything if providers are all afraid to deviate from CDC guidelines.