I agree that it is insulting, as well as dangerous, to many people to presume that a person with no experience or education in the biomedical sciences can independently prescribe medication to all persons, of all ages, with all medical conditions, and taking all other medications based on education that consists of 30 semester hours of instruction taken online on a laptop on Sunday mornings. Those 10 courses of three semester hours each would have to cover all the fundamentals of organic chemistry, physiology, biology, etc. as well as the most sophisticated practices of treating children, adolescents, seniors, persons with chronic illnesses, pregnancies, developmental disorders, and so on and so on.
Here is one example: One of the most prolific programs selling these courses (for $14,000) purports that in 36 clock hours of online instruction, the aspiring prescriber will learn: “child/adolescent psychopharmacology, geriatric psychopharmacology (dementia, polypharmacy, and interactions between pharmacotherapy and age associated illnesses); developmental disorders; treatment of chronic pain disorders; psychopharmacological issues for individuals with chronic medical illness, victims of trauma, and patients with personality disorders.”(This is on the website of the California School of Professional Psychology, if you wish to see it.)
Now really, friends. Does anyone here believe that you can learn all this in 36 clock hours of online instruction? Psychiatrists make child/adolescent a specialization with separate boards and fellowships. "Prescribing psychologists" learn it all in 36 hours along with all those other topics. This is just one of many examples of how the details of the RxP proposals are almost absurd, and why they work hard to hide them.
Read any pro-RxP literature and you will see many references to a "Master's degree in psychopharmacology" and you will never, ever, see them admit to how that degree is earned. You may understand why when you see the nuts and bolts.
It's true that those who oppose RxP do not have data to show that these few prescribers who were educated on laptops have worse outcomes than others, and it's true that there are no data at all. This is a failure of the RxP campaign. They have had 11 years in LA and 13 years in NM to develop this data. There is no empirical evidence that these people are prescribing safely, nor that they are doing so effectively for their patients, or that allowing non-medical persons to prescribe drugs based on such an obviously inferior model compared to any other prescribers is in any way improving access to medications or improving the general mental health system. Strangely, proponents claim that it is up to opponents to gather that data, which of course is absurd. It is incumbent on those who have sought special privileges which, on their face, appear to based on dangerously inferior training, to show that what they are doing is safe and effective.
Also, please consider that the proponents, backed by millions of dollars by the APA's political wing (obtained through fraud in collecting the practice assessment, but that is another matter) would benefit tremendously if they had such data, considering that 181 of their bills have failed in 26 states, and that they just suffered a massive defeat in Illinois last year. Such data could bolster their case substantially ... and yet, no data. This seems to suggest that either they don't care about the science, or they can't produce any systematic evidence that this is safe and effective.
The more details people learn of the RxP proposals, the less they like them. Thus, the best thing for opponents to do is to simply spread the word.