All Our Problems in One Graph

This is Sarah Kliff, writing at Ezra Klein’s blog:

This is Sarah Kliff, writing at Ezra Klein’s blog:

The study actually isn’t good news when you look into what type of health jobs propelled this strong growth. Most of it, the study authors conclude, came from an increase in administrative positions, jobs like billing specialists and office support staff. It’s quite likely that more people with health insurance mean more resources necessary to bill insurance companies and administer the business of health care.

An increase in those kind of jobs is great for employment. But it’s not so great for health care costs. It’s part of the reason that American doctors have administrative costs four times higher than their Canadian counterparts. It likely contributes to growing health care costs that have eaten up nearly a decade worth of increased earnings. And it’s why, at the same time that health care jobs increase, we also have graphs like this: