Political fights over medical credentials hinge on an old confusion with real consequences: a medical degree is academic; a physician’s license is legal. When a candidate leans on “doctor” to imply clinical authority without licensure, the public is asked to judge not only résumé lines but trust.
The Short Version
- Abdul El-Sayed earned an M.D. from Columbia University but has no record of a medical license in Michigan or New York, the two states most often cited in his background.
- He has described himself publicly as a physician; critics argue that title, in law and practice, presumes licensure.
- El-Sayed’s own account of hands-on patient work centers on a four-week sub-internship at the end of medical school.
- This dispute exemplifies a broader pattern in campaigns: collapsing degree, training, and licensure into a single, potent claim about credibility.
What the record establishes: degree, training, and licensure are not the same thing
The backbone facts are not seriously in dispute. Reporting based on state databases indicates El-Sayed has not held a physician’s license in either Michigan or New York, the jurisdictions where he studied and worked after medical school. Licensure is the state’s legal gate to clinical practice—without it, a graduate cannot diagnose, prescribe, or bill as an attending physician. The same reporting affirms he did complete medical school and earned an M.D. at Columbia University, which is a rigorous academic credential but not a license to treat patients independently.
El-Sayed has also publicly described his direct patient-care experience. In a 2022 podcast, he characterized his practical exposure as a short sub-internship—essentially an advanced student rotation—lasting four weeks at a Manhattan hospital at the end of medical school. He recounted being “the worst doctor on the team” and “cosplaying a doctor,” a candid, if inelegant, way to signal a supervised, educational role rather than licensed clinical practice.
Why the title “physician” is contested ground
Language matters because it carries legal and ethical freight. In ordinary speech, “doctor” can denote any doctorate-holder; in medicine, “physician” typically connotes a licensed practitioner. Michigan’s public health code defines physicians by licensure—mirroring the approach used nationwide—so when candidates call themselves “physicians,” voters reasonably infer authority grounded in clinical licensure and practice. That is why fact checks and coverage have repeatedly drawn the distinction: El-Sayed is a doctor by degree, not a licensed physician by law.
Campaigns exploit this ambiguity. Résumé inflation rarely states a literal falsehood; it leans on technically true assertions that imply more than they justify. Here, the implication is clinical mastery. The evidentiary record—no license in Michigan or New York and no practice beyond student rotations—undercuts that implication. A voter evaluating health policy, hospital governance, or medical regulation might weigh that gap heavily; a voter prioritizing public health leadership or policy scholarship may see the M.D. and subsequent public roles as sufficient signals of expertise.
How we got here: the pipeline from medical school to independent practice
To understand the stakes, it helps to recall the standard pathway. Medical school confers the M.D. or D.O. degree. Graduates pass national licensing exams and enter residency, a multi-year apprenticeship with escalating responsibility. States issue training licenses for residents and full licenses for independent practice; board certification, granted by specialty boards after residency and exams, is not legally required but is effectively essential for hospital privileges and insurer panels. Without state licensure, graduates cannot legally function as physicians in clinics or hospitals, outside tightly supervised student roles.
Against that backdrop, a four-week sub-internship is meaningful as education but cannot substitute for residency and licensure in conveying clinical competence to the public. When candidates invoke “physician,” many voters mentally map that term onto residency training, board-eligible or board-certified status, malpractice coverage, and the daily burdens of clinical decision-making—all downstream of licensure. That social meaning is why this line of attack lands.
What each side argues—and what the evidence supports
Mike Rogers’ line—that El-Sayed is presenting himself as something he has not been licensed to be—tracks the legal architecture of medical titles. The strongest documentary point remains the absence of licensure records in Michigan and New York; absent a contrary state record, this is straightforward to verify and difficult to dispute. El-Sayed’s response—he has a Columbia M.D., and skeptics should take it up with Columbia—answers a different question. The degree is real; the inference of licensed clinical authority is not.
The narrower, fair reading is this: El-Sayed is a physician by education but not by licensure or practice history in the states at issue. In public settings where he has embraced “physician,” that phrasing risks misleading lay audiences who equate the term with licensure. Bridge Michigan’s formulation—doctor by degree, not licensed to practice—captures the balance succinctly and aligns with the public record.
Why the distinction matters for voters and for policy
Credentials are not just campaign décor; they shape how officials reason about complex systems. A licensed clinician brings tacit knowledge born of longitudinal patient care: trade-offs in differential diagnosis, workflow constraints, malpractice anxieties, payer friction. A public-health physician by training without licensure may bring different assets: population-health framing, epidemiologic thinking, or administrative experience. Either can be valuable, but they are not interchangeable—and mislabeling confuses the calibration of expertise to task.
The episode also illustrates a recurring civic hazard. Voters are fluent in titles but not in the pipelines that give titles substance. That asymmetry rewards confident shorthand over precise disclosure. The remedy is not to gatekeep academic titles but to demand clarity: degree earned, residency completed or not, license status, and scope of practice. Campaigns that state those facts cleanly deprive opponents of easy attack lines and, more importantly, honor the public’s right to assess the kind of expertise a candidate actually wields.
Mike Rogers: “The doctor isn't really a doctor.”
Dr. Abdul El-Sayed: “I have a medical degree from Columbia University. If he has issues with my credentials, take it up with them. But it's not about me. It's about whether YOU can see your doctor.” pic.twitter.com/BsqOT5k8aJ
— Dr Ahmad Rehan Khan (@AhmadRehanKhan) October 9, 2026
How to read future “doctor in politics” claims
Apply a simple filter. First, separate the credential (M.D./D.O. or other doctorate) from the license (state authority to practice). Second, ask about training: completed residency or not, and in which specialty. Third, look for active practice within the last five years; medicine changes quickly, and recency matters. Finally, weigh relevance: for a legislator shaping health policy, deep public-health work may be more on point than a long-clinical résumé; for an office that oversees hospitals or medical boards, direct practice experience can be a critical asset. Precision about these elements is not pedantry—it is how citizens translate titles into warranted trust.
Sources:
nypost.com, newsnationnow.com, foxnews.com
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