I am a Certified Nurse Midwife working at a busy midwife owned and operated health care practice in Manassas, Virginia.  We are 4 CNMs and several support staff caring primarily for women who lack health care insurance or who receive Medicaid.  We have a sliding scale fee for our services, for women who are non-insured.  We were the first maternity practice in Prince William County to offer Centering Pregnancy model of group prenatal care, a model demonstrated to reduce preterm births and NICU admissions for newborn babies.  in 3.5 years since opening for business, we have provided prenatal care for more than 450 pregnant women, most of whom have given birth in the local community hospital across the street from our office.  We are midwife-owned and operated!  Our founder started Manassas Midwifery because there was such a need for affordable and accessible prenatal care services.  Legislation to requre us to be supervised by a physicians at the head of our "team" could put us out of business.  We currently work quite satisfactorily with obstetricians in a collaborative manner; we do not work for physicians.  In fact, no physicians have been intersted in joining forces with us in a business partnership to provide comprehensive maternity care that would include obstetric care for high risk clients as well as midwifery care to low risk clients.  The current system of collaboration has worked quite well for more than 6 years and has enabled practices like Manassas Midwifery to start up, to meet unmet needs in the community.  Please don't mess with success!!