There are a couple encouraging signs in medicine. First, a lot of doctors advertise that they're board-certified. That's a voluntary, private certification that

There are a couple encouraging signs in medicine. First, a lot of doctors advertise that they're board-certified. That's a voluntary, private certification that attests to the doctor's competence and has more rigorous requirements than state licenses do. Without licensure, there's every reason to think that private certifications would take on even more importance. Second, the market is steadily routing around physician's monopoly on the practice of medicine. There's sverything from questionable stuff like acupuncture and chiropractic to nurses and PAs doing things that only doctors used to be allowed to do (e.g. prescriptions, minor procedures), and those trends seem to be accelerating.