in many cases there is room for automation. I'm not quite confident we are at the level of an Auto-Doc assisting/replacing nurses yet, though. Nurses being thrown into multiple duties for 1.5x standard full time work seems to suggest that one or all of the above factors are not being met.

>The demand also doesn't neccessarily increase linearly with the population.

for elastic goods, no. But medicine is about as inelastic a product as you can get.