I am responding to Dr. Rupp`s article in he October issue. With complete empathy for the author`s position as to most of his substantive considerations, he, in my opinion, fails at a basic, fundamental and legal appreciation. The practice of dentistry is, to date, not a legal national entity, commodity or fundamental care-giving operation entitled to federal and state oversight.
The practices of insurance and medicine have, for many years, been mostly avoided by federal regulators and lawmakers who have yielded to the individual states to separately take charge of the insurance and medicine "games and players" (licensees)!
It is the legal right and prerogative of each state, via inherent constitutional /legal autonomy, to decide the "credentialing and/or reciprocity" issue.
If all our individual states and territorial possessions believe, en masse, that dentists deserve unrestricted licensure, then such could very quickly occur. However, it is not dentistry`s place to make this national decision-making call. While it certainly should attempt to convince state legislatures of the needs of dentists, dentistry should not try to usurp basic states` rights.
John A. Beal, DMD
Methuen, MA
