Licensure of Health Care Professionals: The Consumer's Case for Abolition

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Abstract
While state medical licensure laws ostensibly are intended to promote worthwhile goals, such as the maintenance of high standards in health care delivery, this Article argues that these laws in practice are detrimental to consumers. The Article takes the position that licensure contributes to high medical care costs and stifles competition, innovation and consumer autonomy. It concludes that delicensure would expand the range of health services available to consumers and reduce patient dependency, and that these developments would tend to make medical practice more satisfying to consumers and providers of health care services. I don't know that I cared much about these osteopaths until I heard you were going to drive them out of the State; but since I heard this I haven't been able to sleep . Now what I contend is that my body is my own, at least I have always so regarded it. If I do harm through my experimenting with it, it is I who suffer, not the State." Mark Twain

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