I'd take this generally more seriously, if the number of licensed physicians in the US wasn't growing 3x faster than the population, or if the number of interna

I'd take this generally more seriously, if the number of licensed physicians in the US wasn't growing 3x faster than the population, or if the number of international medical graduates wasn't already 23%. The US population grew by 8% from 2010 to 2022, increasing from 309,327,143 to 333,287,557. The number of licensed physicians grew 23% from 850,085 to 1,044,734. So it's not retirements, or graduations and general licensure. It's the number of General Practitioners, and the number people they treat and amount of time they spend (not necessarily the care the patients receive) that makes wait times longer. The fact that almost all of them are now in larger (private equity controlled?) groups rather than working as independents. That many more choose to specialize for higher pay so that they don't have to work with the masses. It is in the interests of the insurance groups for the price of healthcare to rise since they make a percentage of that cost as profit. As long as everyone has to pay more the insurance companies can pay their executives more money and provide dividends to stockholders. They want all patient care to be a hassle. They want to mandate additional busy work to every transaction. They want drug prices to rise. It improves the bottom line. I don't know that brining in a few more doctors from Barbados or Australia or the UK is going to improve that, and it's probably going to make it worse in other places (that don't have for profit healthcare insurance). https://meridian.allenpress.com/jmr/article/109/2/13/494447/FSMB-Census-of-Licensed-Physicians-in-the-United https://meridian.allenpress.com/jmr/article/109/2/13/494447/...