s in the United States in the hands of the providers; thereby ending the practice that had been in effect until medical licensure was introduced wherein individuals were responsible for their own health. Friedman (1992) concluded that clinical licensure laws created an anti-competitive environment in health care services in the United States.
A federal government study conducted by the Council on Wage and Price Stability in 1978 clinical licensure had outlived its usefulness. In part, the Council concluded that
Our present health care system is created in our doctors' image: highly technological, disease-oriented, hospital-based, expensive, with heavy reliance on diagnostic testing, prescription drugs, and hospital-based surgery. But the present system suffers from physicians' "tragic flaw"ùa nearly exclusive focus on high-tech solutions to end-stage problems. The implanting of an artificial heart is dramatic and newsworthy. But where was that surgeon through all the years of smoking, inactivity, stress, social isolation, and
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