THE CASE AGAINST MEDICAL LICENSING

"Unless we put medical freedom into the Constitution, the time will come when medicine will organize into an underground dictatorship... To restrict the art of healing to one class of men and deny equal privileges to others will constitute the Bastille of medical science.
All such laws are un-American and despotic and have no place in a republic... The Constitution of this republic should make special privilege for medical freedom as well as religious freedom."

--Dr Benjamin Rush, signer of the Declaration of Independence.

Licensing practitioners to protect the public and hold practitioners accountable is often taken for granted … Nobel prize-winning economist Milton Friedman wrote:

"... I am persuaded that licensure has reduced both the quantity and quality of medical practice...It has reduced the opportunities for people to become physicians, it has forced the public to pay more for less satisfactory service, and it has retarded technological development...I conclude that licensure should be eliminated as a requirement for the practice of medicine."(1)

Nobel Prize-winning economist George J. Stigler of the University of Chicago wrote:

"As a rule, regulation is acquired by the industry and is designed and operated primarily for its benefit".(2)

Lori B. Andrews, Professor of Law and Norman and Edna Freehling Scholar, Chicago-Kent College of Law, wrote:

"Licensing has served to channel the development of health care services by granting an exclusive privilege and high status to practitioners relying on a particular approach to health care, a disease-oriented intrusive approach rather than a preventive approach....By granting a monopoly to a particular approach to health care, the licensing laws may serve to assure an ineffective health care system."(3)

Ron Paul, MD, a practicing obstetrician and a Congressman from Texas, wrote:

Let us allow physicians, hospitals and schools to spring up where they're needed, abolish the restrictive licensure laws, and simply invoke the laws against fraud to insure honesty among all providers of health care...That will make health care affordable for everyone..."(4)

The idea of deregulating health practitioners may seem extreme. Let us examine why it is not as radical as it may sound.

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