Physician Licensure Legislation and the Quality of Medical Care
To summarize, the empirical tests used in this study have found no support for the contention that physicians were initially regulated at the behest of the general population. Rather, empirical support was found for the theory that licensing legislation was the result of organized physicians employing the political system for limiting entry and the concomitant increaseing of returns to incumbent medical practitioners. Additionally, this study found no support for the contention that state licensing of physicians was associated with higher levels of health care quality as measured by mortality rates among various population age groups.