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From: tan@ihlpg.UUCP (Bill Tanenbaum)
Newsgroups: net.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Credentials, State vs. private
Message-ID: <1208@ihlpg.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 9-Sep-85 19:01:19 EDT
Article-I.D.: ihlpg.1208
Posted: Mon Sep  9 19:01:19 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 10-Sep-85 04:54:01 EDT
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Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
Lines: 33

> > [P. Berman]
> > What we see here is a naive belief in the selfregulatory powers.
> >  ...Yesterday there was an article in NYT
> > about widespread incompetience among doctors.  Since no centralized
> > system of credencial exists, it is extremally difficult to prevent
> > incompetient (at time fraudulent) doctors to be in the profession.
-----
> [Gene Mutschler]
> Wrong again.  These doctors are still in practice precisely because
> there are credentialling systems.  In a free society, where anyone
> is free to practice medicine and where competitive pressures would
> cause dissemination of information as to relative competence, the bad
> doctors would quickly be forced out of business.  Under the current
> system, all one has to do is pass the exam once, and one is a doctor
> for life.  What little state review there is is hesitant to take away
> a doctor's licence because that would presumably deprive that doctor
> of his/her livelihood.  The free market would not be so sympathetic.
-- 
Oh, come on, Gene.  There is already an oversupply of doctors in most
metropolitan areas of the U. S.  Only rural areas, many small towns, and
some inner city areas have shortages.  The free market, as you call it,
already operates among credentialled physicians.  The competitive pressures
you talk about already exist.  Doctors and hospitals are already
advertising for patients.  It may be true that the medical profession
keeps medical school admissions down to control the supply of doctors.
But when I go to a doctor, I want to know that he/she has gone to medical
school, had some experience as an intern, and passed that exam.  So
does virtually everybody else, except Libertarian utopians.
 You are right about the condition of state review.  Abolishing it
would make matters still worse, not better.  At least now, a small handful
of the most blatantly incompetent lose their liscences.
-- 
Bill Tanenbaum - AT&T Bell Labs - Naperville IL  ihnp4!ihlpg!tan