I expect the partisans to argue about this article as far as the health care law is concerned:
Health experts, including many who support the law, say there is little that the government or the medical profession will be able to do to close the gap by 2014, when the law begins extending coverage to about 30 million Americans. It typically takes a decade to train a doctor.
However, pertinent to the education bubble, we need doctors - and medical school is not in a bubble compared to other degrees. Of course, in how economics says education is a waste, we find that supply and demand ultimately matter, something many are missing when they try to argue in favor of education. While our marketplace holds too many degrees, unfortunately, we are seeing a major gap in some professions - the main one being medical school. In fact, law school is in a huge bubble, while these same students won't consider pursuing a medical degree (an MD is much harder to obtain). One related point I speak about that goes missing in this analysis is that while lawyers want all systems to become more bureaucratic, doctors want the system to produce superior results. The United States almost graduates more lawyers than doctors - what do you think the long term effect of this will be? I expect that the medical system in the United States will grow more complex over time.
The Supply and Demand Problem
Unlike other degrees, we have a major supply problem with medical school. We have a massive generation aging (the Baby Boomers) and we've expanded medical coverage under the health care law (increasing competition for goods and services). We don't have the equivalent increase in students attending medical school and we continue to see a rise in lawyers - these lawyers will only complicate the future healthcare system. In other words, health care costs will continue to rise for the foreseeable future due to a lack of doctors (this factor alone will cause problems). As this causes pain in the medical field, it could create more shortages because a shortage of labor can lead to overwork of that labor (ie: with a doctor shortage, existing doctors have to "offset" the labor shortage, thus some may choose to retire early). This could also cause pain in related medical professions, such as nursing.
Another factor, contributing to this problem, is the hostility toward young men on college campuses. In a private discussion I had with executives titled "Too Many Young Men In STEM Fields", I highlighted government policies trying to attract more young women, while punishing young men with interest in science (normally, a precursor to medical school). To put it bluntly: we need doctors regardless of their gender. While I understand the political move, as young women predominantly are viewed as a voter base, the problem is that we have a labor shortage in medicine. When you're faced with a labor shortage, you don't exacerbate the problem with policies that increase the shortage. Don't miss that male doctors are much more likely to work longer hours than female doctors. This means that you would need close to as much as twice as many female doctors as male doctors.
Note: The unintended consequences of serving only your group of people is that you end up undermining your group of people. We live in a society with a specialized division of labor. In this society, we rely on others and their skills (specialty). If we have a shortage of any specialty, we all pay a higher cost. Any political policy that favors one group over another in a way that would discourage one group from obtaining a specialty (especially when that specialty is in a shortage), will result is huge consequences for everyone including the favored group.
Ideology Over Pragmatism
A college professor once told me that all problems fundamentally begin when people place an ideology over pragmatism and we see that here. We have a shortage of doctors, an aging population, and plans to expand healthcare (all on top of a growing national debt that will eventually bankrupt the country). Yet we don't have the fundamentals in place for these things to exist in reality. In addition, we're adding legal complexity to the healthcare system (thank you lawyers!) and we're discouraging young men from going to college, ironically lowering the supply of future doctors that we'll need. In a way, the future looks bright for those in medical school, but sadly looks dim for the rest of the country.
The Automation Myth
One response I get and have gotten from executives? "We'll automate healthcare." Future promises of AI (though AI has been around since the 1970s) or other technological tools that will make healthcare better. Ironically the people saying this don't realize that automation in healthcare has not actually made it better - people are not living longer. In fact, when you compare communities that don't use technology (ie: Amish) with communities that do, it's difficult to see how increased automation has had any impact.
While outside this post's scope, one of many reasons for this in healthcare involves care: we feel better when we know that someone or someones care of us. Visiting a doctor is not the same experience as seeing a health report without any interaction that we're doing good. Humans are social creatures and what can be easily overlooked in medicine is that removing the social side of medicine removes some of its care. This means that automation can help, but should not replace people because patients may get value from the social side of care.
If automation doesn't move standards of living forward, then the automation doesn't matter. You can automate many things in your life and you should. But automate something that you deeply enjoy, such as a computer playing the piano for you rather than you playing your favorite song. It doesn't fit. Why? Because most of us don't want to automate what we enjoy; we want to experience what we enjoy. In some cases, the social side of healthcare is very important - speaking with a caring doctor or nurse actually helps us feel better or inspires us to feel better. If that's what we need, then no report (or future robot) will help us.
