Is the requirement of passing the NMAT before one can be admitted to medical school unconstitutional?

■ It is true that this Court has upheld the constitutional right of every citizen to select a profession or course of study subject to a fair, reasonable, and equitable admission and academic requirements. But like all rights and freedoms guaranteed by the Charter, their exercise may be so regulated pursuant to the police power of the State to safeguard health, morals, peace, education, order, safety, and general welfare of the people. Thus, persons who desire to engage in the learned professions requiring scientific or technical knowledge may be required to take an examination as a prerequisite to engaging in their chosen careers. This regulation takes particular pertinence in the field of medicine, to protect the public from the potentially deadly effects of incompetence and ignorance among those who would practice medicine. (Professional Regulation Commission vs. De Guzman, G.R. No. 144681. June 21, 2004)

■ Petitioners urge that the NMAT (National Medical Admission Test) is an "unfair, unreasonable and inequitable requirement," which results in a denial of due process. They appear to suggest that passing the NMAT is an unnecessary requirement when added on top of the admission requirements set out in Section 7 of the Medical Act of 1959, and other admission requirements established by internal regulations of the various medical schools, public or private. 

Petitioners arguments thus appear to relate to utility and wisdom or desirability of the NMAT requirement. But constitutionality is essentially a question of power or authority: this Court has neither commission or competence to pass upon questions of the desirability or wisdom or utility of legislation or administrative regulation. Those questions must be address to the political departments of the government not to the courts.

There is another reason why the petitioners' arguments must fail: the legislative and administrative provisions impugned by them constitute a valid exercise of the police power of the state. The police power, it is commonplace learning, is the pervasive and non-waivable power and authority of the sovereign to secure and promote an the important interests and needs — in a word, the public order — of the general community. An important component of that public order is the health and physical safety and well being of the population, the securing of which no one can deny is a legitimate objective of governmental effort and regulation.

The regulation of the practice of medicine in all its branches is a reasonable method of protecting the health and safety of the public. The power to regulate and control the practice of medicine includes the power to regulate admission to the ranks of those authorized to practice medicine. Thus, legislation and administrative regulations requiring those who wish to practice medicine first to take and pass medical board examinations have long ago been recognized as valid exercises of governmental power. (Tablarin v. Gutierrez, G.R. No. 78164, July 31, 1987)