The lack of GPs has become an increasing problem in the last few years. There's just not enough of them being trained for some reason. I don't think it's just that med school is long and expensive, although that's probably a factor. I think the long-ignored poor mental health of doctors plays a part (they have a higher rate of suicide than the gen pop), and the overall deteriorating respect for medicine and science in general also plays a part.
Not enough foreign doctors are being approved to work, and that's always been an issue. They get approved to move here because they're doctors, but then some of them have to basically go through medical school again, and can't afford it here. (I don't have the knowledge to say if that's good or bad. Maybe in some cases it's totally warranted, and in other cases it's not. I also think it depends on where they want to live. There ARE lots of foreign doctors working here, but also lots of them are Uber drivers. They may prefer being an Uber driver in a city that has a community of people from their culture, than risk going to some small remote town they've never heard of. I'm just speculating though. There are immigrants in small towns, and even some up north, so who knows.)
The pandemic didn't help. The burnout prompted some older doctors to retire early and some younger doctors to quit wholesale. Antivaxer nonsense, sometimes from other medical professionals, also contributed to doctors quitting. During the pandemic, every few weeks there was an article about how the only family doctor in some small town, who treated everybody there for 30 years, was retiring early because of the constant harassment and death threats they'd get from Qanon types.
Nowadays, you get news stories of small town family doctors quitting because they've burned out on handling 4x more patients than they should have for years.
Also, and this is just a guess, but I think more young people are using or trying to use GPs than ever before. Lots of people don't necessarily need a GP, and even if they have one, they won't see them very often, maybe even less than once a year. If you're healthy, you don't actually need a yearly physical until you're older. And with modern technology, things like pap smears don't have to be performed as early or often. It's not unusual for a working-age adult without children to not have a GP, or hardly ever visit them.
But the younger generations (Millennials and Gen Z) are more medicated than older ones, both for physical things like asthma, and for mental issues. Probably some are over medicated... but even removing all the munchies, over medicated, and HAES types who are having the health problems of a 60 year old at 20, I think Millennials and Gen Zs overall are just more aware and proactive with their long term health. So there might have been an unexpected increase in demand for GPs as Gen Zs started moving away from their pediatricians. And the pandemic would have made that worse, potentially triggering physical or mental issues, or just munchiness, that persists.
