MD here. I'm of two minds about this. On the one hand, obviously there's a bit of defensiveness since I went through 12 years of school and training to be an independent physician (4 years college, 4 years medical school, 4 years residency) and I've definitely seen subpar care from other "providers" (not a fan of the term) with less training. The wide variety of different "providers" is also confusing to patients who have little idea the differences in training and scope. The training for non-MD "providers" seems very variable, unlike the quite standardized MD training. I definitely think residency training is a much more robust and you need to have that critical feedback from supervising physicians to improve, which I think can be lacking in non-residency based training. Overall, nothing against PAs/NPs, I know some great ones.
On the other hand, a lot of what I do doesn't require 12 years of training, so I am sympathetic to making health care more accessible. I am also a bit jealous that my non-MD colleagues can easily switch from e.g. being a primary care PA to being dermatology PA, whereas as an MD I'm pretty much stuck in my specialty unless I go through another 4+ year residency. Instead of MD-training getting shorter to compete, it's actually getting longer in many cases. Residency trainings are getting longer not shorter for a number of specialties (e.g. neurosurgery, interventional cardiology, pediatric hospitalist).
On the other hand, a lot of what I do doesn't require 12 years of training, so I am sympathetic to making health care more accessible. I am also a bit jealous that my non-MD colleagues can easily switch from e.g. being a primary care PA to being dermatology PA, whereas as an MD I'm pretty much stuck in my specialty unless I go through another 4+ year residency. Instead of MD-training getting shorter to compete, it's actually getting longer in many cases. Residency trainings are getting longer not shorter for a number of specialties (e.g. neurosurgery, interventional cardiology, pediatric hospitalist).