The Word “Physician” Isn’t a Slogan. It’s a License.

Two states made this title black-letter law—and a felony to misuse.

By Eric J. Lullove, DPM, CWSP, MAPWCA, FFPM RCPS(Glasg)
Contributing Medical Editor, Blue Amp Media

To every Michigan resident heading into the August 4 Democratic Senate primary: Read this one carefully, because it lives in my professional lane. And before anyone files it under “partisan attack,” understand what this piece is and isn’t. It is not an endorsement of anyone. It is not a case for a party. It is a case for a process—the same credentialing process every licensed clinician in this country is held to, applied without regard to whose name is on the ballot.

This week, Mehdi Hasan—no conservative, and by his own record a broadly sympathetic interviewer of this candidate—asked a question most reporters wouldn’t touch. Abdul El-Sayed has repeatedly called himself a physician. Yet he holds no valid state medical license in New York or Michigan. Hasan pressed the obvious follow-up: Did you tell the truth? El-Sayed didn’t answer it. He pivoted—to your child’s education, to his tenure as Detroit’s health director, to the claim that he’s eliminated more medical debt than “most doctors.” He then pointed to his diploma, noting he graduated from a school literally called Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons, and suggested anyone with a problem could take it up with the university.

That the questioner was an ally is the whole point. When the person most inclined to give a candidate the benefit of the doubt still must stop and ask whether the biography is accurate, the issue has left the realm of partisanship and entered the realm of fact. And in my field, it’s a serious fact.

Why I Get to Say This to Michigan

Let me be clear about my standing to write these words to this state, because it matters. I grew up in Michigan. I graduated from high school there and earned my college degree there. My roots are still in that ground—family, friends, and a set of values I carry into every exam room and every hearing to this day. I am not a stranger parachuting in with an opinion about a place I’ve never lived. When I address Michigan voters, I address them as one of their own, with the standing that comes from having been shaped by that community.

That is precisely why I can make these statements with the phrasing I’m using. I know what Michigan expects of the people who serve it, because Michigan is where I learned it. The state raised me on the idea that your word and your credentials should match. This isn’t a lecture from the outside. It’s a message from someone who came up in the same places these voters did, asking them to hold to the same standard the rest of us were taught there.

A Diploma Is Not a License

Let me draw the line cleanly, because I’ve spent a career on the credentialing side of medicine—in audit rooms and appeals hearings where the difference between a degree and a license is the whole case. This line does not move for Democrats or Republicans. It does not move for candidates I might vote for or against. It is fixed.

Abdul El-Sayed earned a Doctor of Medicine degree. That is real, and it is not nothing. But an MD is an academic credential—proof you completed medical school. A license is something entirely different. It is a state’s active grant of authority to practice medicine, issued only after residency training, board examination, and ongoing accountability to a licensing board that can suspend or revoke it. The public record shows El-Sayed has never held a medical license in Michigan or New York. He has the diploma. He does not have the license.

The word physician is the license word. It signals to a patient, a voter, a hospital, or a court that the state stands behind you and that a board can hold you to account. It is not a synonym for “went to medical school.” It is not a vibe. It is a legally regulated title, and both states in question say so in statute—statutes written by legislatures of both parties, enforced against members of both parties, and neutral on their face.