Race and Medical Licensing Laws
The American Medical Association originally denied membership to African American physicians and, until the 1960s, allowed state chapters to exclude Black physicians. States also require at least one year of postgraduate training, but Black graduates were often excluded at most institutions, which impeded the delivery of health care, especially to patients in the Deep South. In 2008 the AMA issued a formal apology to the nation’s African American physicians for its decades of racial discrimination. Through her scholarship, Harriet A. Washington, a writing fellow in Bioethics at Harvard Medical School, was largely responsible for making that happen. On November 10th, Washington, along with Marshala R. Lee and Jeffrey A. Miron, discussed how licensing can become a tool to affect racist ends.
Drug Reformation: End Government’s Power to Require Prescriptions
U.S. law grants the Food and Drug Administration the power to make consumers get a prescription before purchasing certain drugs. The rationale behind government‐imposed prescription requirements is consumer safety—that is, the idea that some drugs are too dangerous for consumers to use without physician supervision. In a new study, Cato scholars Jeffrey A. Singer and Michael F. Cannon argue that government‐imposed prescription requirements violate the rights of individuals to access the medicines they want, and actually make patients less safe, not more.
Reform Regulation of Health Care Providers
The COVID-19 crisis has dramatically underscored the importance of being able to rapidly shift practitioners to areas of acute need. When state governments suspended state licensing requirements, Cato adjunct scholar Jeffrey A. Singer notes, it was a tacit admission that clinician licensing laws block access to care. In this issue of Pandemics and Policy, Singer explains why states should not return to the status quo ante.
Experts
