Shift Government Focus From The Demand Side Of Medical Care To The Supply Of Medical Care To Lower Health Care Costs

My posted health care cost comment to John Cochrane's blog, The Grumpy Economist, "Health policy wonks and the preservation of human capital":

Shift the focus from the demand side of medical care, i.e., insurance, government subsidies (Medicare for all, Medicaid, Medicare, ACA), and price controls, to a focus on increasing the supply of medical care providers. Lower the barriers to entry for health care providers by lowering the licensing requirements and decreasing the years of education and training it takes to become an independent medical provider. Increasing the supply of medical providers until there is an oversupply will increase competition and productivity. Do the equivalent for hospitals and health facilities. Competition and productivity will remove low quality, high price inefficient providers from the marketplace and lower the costs of medical care. Lower medical care costs will lower insurance costs because insurance is just reimbursement for the cost of the use of medical care. As medical care and hospital costs decrease through productivity, insurance premiums will decline and more people will be able to afford health care. The high cost of medical care and medical insurance is a result of a limited supply of providers and low medical care productivity.

About 5% Of Americans Work More Than One Job

From E21, "Bernie’s Wrong: Americans Now Less Likely to Work 2 or 3 Jobs" by Allison Schrager:

The front-runner for the Democratic Presidential nomination, Bernie Sanders argues one reason the economy is “broken” is that "Millions of Americans are forced to work two or three jobs just to survive."

But the number of Americans working more than one job has actually been declining over the years and is only about 5%. Most multiple job holders have a full-time job and a part-time job. Only 5% of multiple job holders have two full-time jobs. Women are slightly more likely to be multiple job holders.

Source:  E21

US Mortgage Foreclosures At 35-Year Low

From The Wall Street Journal, "The Daily Shot: U.S. Foreclosure Rate Drops to 35-Year Low" by Lev Borodovsky:

According to the Mortgage Bankers Association, US mortgage delinquencies as a share of total loans dropped to the lowest level in recent decades.

Source: The Wall St Journal, The Daily Shot

And the percentage of mortgages in foreclosure is now the lowest in 35 years.

Source: The Wall St Journal, The Daily Shot

Post Recession, Share Of Job Vacancies Requiring A Bachelor’s Degree Increased From 23 Percent In 2007 To 37 Percent In 2019

From "Structural Increases In Skill Demand After The Great Recession" by Peter Q. Blair and David J. Deming, NBER Working Paper 26680:

ABSTRACTIn this paper we use detailed job vacancy data to estimate changes in skill demand in the years since the Great Recession. The share of job vacancies requiring a bachelor’s degree increased by more than 60 percent between 2007 and 2019, with faster growth in professional occupations and high-wage cities. Since the labor market was becoming tighter over this period, cyclical “upskilling” is unlikely to explain our findings.

PAPEROur main finding is that skill demand has increased substantially in the decade following the Great Recession. The share of online job vacancies requiring a bachelor’s degree increased from 23 percent in 2007 to 37 percent in 2019, an increase of more than 60 percent. Most of this increase occurred between 2007 and 2010, consistent with the finding that the Great Recession provided an opportunity for firms to upgrade skill requirements in response to new technologies (Hershbein and Kahn 2018).

We present several pieces of evidence suggesting that the increase in skill demand is structural, rather than cyclical. We replicate the findings of Hershbein and Kahn (2018)and Modestino, Shoag, and Ballance (2019), who show that skill demands increased morein labor markets that were harder hit by the Great Recession. However, when we extendthe sample forward and adjust for differences in the composition of online vacancies, we find that this cyclical “upskilling” fades within a few years. In its place, we find longrun structural increases in skill demand across all labor markets. In fact, we show that the increase in skill demand post-2010 is larger in higher-wage cities. We also find much larger increases in the demand for education in professional, high-wage occupations such as management, business, science and engineering.***Our results suggest that increasing demand for educated workers is likely a persistent feature of the U.S. economy post-recession.