ABOUT State Medical Licensing Boards

Posted on March 22, 2025 by Dr. David Edward Marcinko MBA MEd CMP™

A CONTROVERSY?

By Staff Reporters

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DEFINITION

State medical boards are the agencies that license medical doctors, investigate complaints, discipline physicians who violate the medical practice act, and refer physicians for evaluation and rehabilitation when appropriate. The overriding mission of medical boards is to serve the public by protecting it from incompetent, unprofessional, and improperly trained physicians. Medical boards accomplish this by striving to ensure that only qualified physicians are licensed to practice medicine and that those physicians provide their patients with a high standard of care.

The right to practice medicine is a privilege granted by the state. Each state has laws and regulations that govern the practice of medicine and specify the responsibilities of the medical board in regulating that practice. These regulations are laid out in a state statute, usually called a medical practice act. State medical boards establish the standards for the profession through their interpretation and enforcement of this act.

Assembling a quality physician population to meet the needs of the public begins with licensure. During the process of evaluating applicants for medical licensure, state medical boards’ primary focus is on a physician’s qualifications, including undergraduate and graduate medical education, work history, and personal character.

Candidates for licensure also must successfully complete a rigorous examination designed to assess their ability to apply knowledge, concepts, and principles of health and disease that constitute the basis for safe and effective patient care.

The Federation of State Medical Boards of the United States, Inc., and the National Board of Medical Examiners (NBME) have collaborated to establish a single, 3-step examination for medical licensure in the United States, known as the United States Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE). The USMLE provides state medical boards with a common evaluation system for all licensure applicants. To assure the continued relevance of the exam, the NBME uses basic science and clinical faculty from the nation’s medical schools as well as practicing physicians, some of whom serve on state medical boards, to generate the examinations.

Cite: https://journalofethics.ama-assn.org/article/role-state-medical-boards/2005-04

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OPINIONS

“… I am persuaded that licensure has reduced both the quantity and quality of medical practice…It has reduced the opportunities for people to become physicians, it has forced the public to pay more for less satisfactory service, and it has retarded technological development…I conclude that licensure should be eliminated as a requirement for the practice of medicine”

-Milton Friedman, Nobel prize-winning economist

“As a rule, regulation is acquired by the industry and is designed and operated primarily for its benefit”

-George J. Stigler Nobel Prize-winning economist

“Licensing has served to channel the development of health care services by granting an exclusive privilege and high status to practitioners relying on a particular approach to health care, a disease-oriented intrusive approach rather than a preventive approach….By granting a monopoly to a particular approach to health care, the licensing laws may serve to assure an ineffective health care system”

-Lori B. Andrews, Professor of Law, Chicago-Kent College

“Let us allow physicians, hospitals and schools to spring up where they’re needed, abolish the restrictive licensure laws, and simply invoke the laws against fraud to insure honesty among all providers of health care …That will make health care affordable for everyone”

-Ron Paul, MD former Texas Congressman

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MONETARISM: Financing and Policy

Posted on March 11, 2025 by Dr. David Edward Marcinko MBA MEd CMP™

By Staff Reporters

SPONSOR: http://www.MarcinkoAssociates.com

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Monetarism is the belief that changes in the money supply are the main determinant of changes in inflation, associated especially with Milton Friedman, an American economist. Cases of hyperinflation have indeed been associated with the rapid printing of money. But when governments adopted monetarist policies in the late 1970s and early 1980s, they found money supply hard to control and also struggled to decide which measure of money supply was best to target. Monetarist policies were abandoned in favor of inflation targeting.

Monetary financing is the direct financing of government spending by the central bank. This happened during the hyperinflation in Germany in 1923 and was thus regarded as anathema for a long period afterwards. As a result, some commentators viewed quantitative easing after the financial crisis of 2007-09 with great suspicion. Technically, however, QE is not monetary financing, because central banks only buy government bonds in the secondary market and because they pay interest on reserves (the money they create).

Monetary policy The use, normally by the central bank, of interest rates and other tools to try to influence the economy. Interest rates are raised when the bank is trying to control inflation and lowered when inflation is low and it is trying to revive the economy. The financial crisis of 2007-09 led central banks to face the zero lower bound. This prompted many of them to use a new tool, quantitative easing, which was designed to bring down long-term rates or bond yields.

Cite: Economist.com

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ANGUS DEATON’S: Paradox

Posted on November 12, 2024 by Dr. David Edward Marcinko MBA MEd CMP™

By Staff Reporters

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Angus Deaton’s 1980s studies, including one called “Why is consumption so smooth?” gave birth to a concept called the Deaton Paradox — in short, sharp shocks to income didn’t seem to cause similarly large shocks to consumption.

IOW: Consumption varies surprisingly smoothly despite sharp variations in income.

CITE: https://www.r2library.com/Resource/Title/0826102549

According to David Henderson, this was an important development in understanding the actions of consumers, causing economists to rethink the “permanent income hypothesis” developed by Milton Friedman, which suggested that people spend based on their lifetime income.

And, Mike Bird wrote a good article on Deaton the highlighted the Nobel Prize in Economics Committee.

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WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF A “Modern” CORPORATION?

Posted on June 13, 2024 by Dr. David Edward Marcinko MBA MEd CMP™

An Emerging New Definition?

By Dr. David Edward Marcinko MBA MEd CMP

When I was in business school back-in-the day, I studied the late great economist Milton Friedman Ph.D who opined that the purpose of a corporation was to enhance shareholder value, in an ethical and legal manner; period? Shareholders could then do what they wished with profits; if any. Charitable giving or Selfish intent, etc!

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Now, for those of you who haven’t had time to review the recent seismic tome from The Business Roundtable Announcement this week, let me review why this is as big a moment as the Larry Fink BlackRock letter.

  • The Business Roundtable, a group of chief executive officers of nearly 200 major U.S. corporations, issues a statement with a new definition of the “purpose of a corporation.” Seven [7] refused to sign.
  • The reimagined idea of a corporation drops the age-old notion that they function first and foremost to serve their shareholders and maximize profits.
  • Investing in employees, delivering value to customers, dealing ethically with suppliers and supporting outside communities are now at the forefront of American business goals; ie., community good.

MORE: https://www.forbes.com/sites/afdhelaziz/2019/08/23/the-power-of-purpose-milton-friedman-is-rolling-in-his-grave/#6ed8506f7532

DEFINITION: A shareholder or stockholder is an individual or institution (including a corporation) that legally owns a share of stock in a public or private corporation. Shareholders are the owners of a limited company. They buy shares which represent part ownership of a company.

DEFINITION: A stakeholder as defined in its first usage in a 1963 internal memorandum at the Stanford Research Institute, are “those groups without whose support the organization would cease to exist.” The theory was later developed and championed by R. Edward Freeman in the 1980s.

LINK: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/08/19/the-ceos-of-nearly-two-hundred-companies-say-shareholder-value-is-no-longer-their-main-objective.html

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The Conundrum [real or perceived]

Shareholders are ever stakeholders in a corporation, but stakeholders are not always shareholders. A shareholder possesses part of a public company through shares of stock, while a stakeholder has a concern in the performance of a company for reasons other than stock performance or appreciation; ie., community good.

QUERY: So, exactly who will determine community good? And, who selects the stakeholders? Haven’t socially responsible companies, stocks, mutual funds and ETFs, etc., been in existence for decades? Is Professor Friedman rolling in his grave? OR, is this condundrum just linguistic gymnastics?

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LINK: https://www.amazon.com/Dictionary-Health-Economics-Finance-Marcinko/dp/0826102549/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1254413315&sr=1-6

Your thoughts are appreciated.

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What is the Economic CONSUMPTION FUNCTION Theory?

Posted on January 18, 2022 by Dr. David Edward Marcinko MBA MEd CMP™

WE ARE NOT CONSUMING AND THE MARKETS ARE DOWN

By Staff Reporters

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A Theory of the Consumption Function

One of Milton Friedman’s most popular works, A Theory of the Consumption Function, challenged traditional Keynesian viewpoints about the household. This work was originally published in 1957 by Princeton University Press, and it reanalyzed the relationship displayed “between aggregate consumption or aggregate savings and aggregate income.”

CITE: https://www.r2library.com/Resource/Title/082610254

Keynes: https://medicalexecutivepost.com/2016/05/25/keynesian-versus-austrian-economics/

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Consumption Function Definition

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Now, according to Wikipedia, Friedman’s counterpart Keynes believed people would modify their household consumption expenditures to relate to their existing income levels. Friedman’s research introduced the term “permanent income” to the world, which was the average of a household’s expected income over several years, and he also developed the permanent income hypothesis. Friedman thought income consisted of several components, namely transitory and permanent. He established the formula y = y p + y t {\displaystyle y=y_{p}+y_{t}} {\displaystyle y=y_{p}+y_{t}} in order to calculate income, with p representing the permanent component, and t representing the transitory component.

A model of the Permanent Income Hypothesis

Milton Friedman’s research changed how economists interpreted the consumption function, and his work pushed the idea that current income was not the only factor affecting people’s adjustment household consumption expenditures. Instead, expected income levels also affected how households would change their consumption expenditures. Friedman’s contributions strongly influenced research on consumer behavior, and he further defined how to predict consumption smoothing, which contradicts Keynes’ marginal propensity to consume. Although this work presented many controversial points of view which differed from existing viewpoints established by Keynes, A Theory of the Consumption Function helped Friedman gain respect in the field of economics. His work on the Permanent Income Hypothesis is among the many contributions which were listed as reasons for his Sveriges-Riskbank Prize in Economic Sciences. His work was later expanded on by Christopher D. Carroll, especially in regards to the absence of liquidity constraints.

READ MORE HERE:

Of course, the Permanent Income Hypothesis faced some criticism, mainly from Keynesian economists. The primary criticism of the hypothesis is based on a lack of liquidity constraints.

HAYEK: https://medicalexecutivepost.com/2011/05/06/john-maynard-keynes-v-s-fa-hayek/

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Your comments are appreciated.

QUERY: What is the CF for Healthcare?

MORE: https://medicalexecutivepost.com/2018/09/18/are-doctors-practitioners-of-conspicuous-consumption/

THANK YOU

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