Physicians aren't licensed to practice upon finishing med school. They then have years of residencies (minimum 3, I believe). It takes 11 years to be a psychiatrist, for example. From the AMA web site:

All physicians educated in the United States, including Puerto Rico, and Canada, have completed approximately four years of education in a medical school or college of osteopathic medicine. Most individuals who attended medical school outside the United States are certified by the Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates.

Upon completing undergraduate medical education, physicians undertake up to seven years of graduate medical education and or osteopathic graduate medical education. The length of training varies depending on the specialty or subspecialty a physician pursues. Some physicians complete additional residency training in a specialty or subspecialty. After completing residency training and satisfying additional requirements, physicians are eligible for voluntary medical specialty board certification or osteopathic specialty board certification.

In the U.S., you take an exam when you graduate med school and you become licensed. With that license, you can practice medicine, in any area. You are not required to do an internship or a residency, although almost everyone does because it is a prerequisite to get admitting privleges to a hospital or to take your boards. You are also not required to take boards, they are VOLUNTARY as the AMA website says (it's confusing but if you read the quote you posted carefully that is what it says). Board certification in a specialty is optional and many doctors, particularly in small towns, practice without being board certified.

On a side note, I once went to a doctor in a small town who wasn't board certified, because there isn't much competition there so people don't ask for it, and I can honestly say I got really good care. I'm not sure board certification matters that much if you just have a cold or something. However, I would not go to a surgeon without board certification.

This is not true. After you graduate from med school you are given a temporary license. You use this temporary license to complete an internship afterwhich you sit for STEP III of the boards and if pass you are considered a license physician.

I stand corrected. You are right in my state you are required to do one year of internship before you become fully licenced. I thought she was talking about medical specialty boards, which require much more.

A different argument against restrictive licensing
 

At:
http://kanbaroo.blogspot.com/2007/11...lment-law.html, you can find an argument against restrictions on legal representation that doesn't depend on "free market" economics. Instead, the appeal is to U.S. Constitutional rights and the conditions for effective legal representation.

see http://kanBARoo.blogspot.com generally for a critique of the Bar establishment. Guaranteed not to be your parents' critique.

See also (more directly to the point): State Bar versus the Right to Self-Representation