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A Dangerous Plank in the PlatformBy Brian McIndoo - State convention Delegate, and Platform Committee Member for the San Bernardino Libertarian Party.Fellow Libertarians, I love my country, and the Libertarian party. I want to live in a world that is as close to ideal as possible. Sometimes, unfortunately, the ideal is not based on reality, and practicality becomes more important. A good, and often mentioned, example of this is Communism. It is a beautiful concept in theory, but we have all seen how this political model has been corrupted repeatedly by many governments. I am on the platform committee for the California convention, and as part of my duty I was reading the California platform. I agree with most of it, but there are a few things that I have issues with. These are legitimate things to have on the platform from a hard-line Libertarian view, but they are not practical, or wise in my opinion. My first and most major concern is in the platform as Part IV section 10d. It states: "The health and physical well-being of individuals are not proper concerns of government. These should be matters of personal choice and responsibility. The State should not be involved in the regulation of the profession of medicine or in the delivery of health care. Therefore, we advocate the following reforms. An end to all mandatory licensing and certification requirements for the practice of medicine."
This is a very dangerous idea. Sure, in an ideal world, we wouldn't have to worry about unqualified people treating us when we are sick and injured. The medical profession would police itself. People would be smart enough to check credentials before seeing a "physician". This is a long ways off from being an ideal world. If you are in an auto accident, and unconscious, you have no control over where you are brought and who does surgery. Don't you want to know that the man or woman responsible for keeping you alive has the skill and knowledge to do a good job? According to the platform, one of the roles of government is to protect its citizens from fraud. If a medical license is optional, anyone could claim to be a doctor, and this would no longer be a fraudulent claim.
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