The problem is that, for many years, medical schools pushed primary care to the point that it was Politically Incorrect to choose specialty training.
As a result, there is now a glut of primary care M.D.'s, nurse practitioners and physician assistants and a shortage of specialists.
In addition, many primary care physicians opted for clinic practices with one day off during the week and with "Hospitalists" taking care of their patients if they need hospital admission. In short, they made themselves interchangeable with outpatient clinic nurse practitioners and outpatient clinic physician assistants.
So, with the Laws of Supply and Demand being what they are, specialists are now swamped with work but very well paid while primary care physicians are treated as somebody that can easily be replaced by a nurse practitioner or a physician assistant and paid accordingly.
actually,outpatient internal medicine is disappearing. A good internist is highly in demand and difficult to hire. In my last job I worked for a large multispecialty group, and we had to hire FP’s to fill internal medicine slots, as there were not any internists to interview, let alone hire. Statistics show of the graduates in internal medicine programs, about 2/3 go on to subspecialty training, and 1/3 become hospitalists. Do the math on how many are going into primary care.
In Florida where my parents live, a good portion of their friends have no primary care physician and have to get there care from urgent care clinics. Expect this to get worse.
See my post #68;
The statistics are quite the opposite of what you are saying. Family Practice slots very seldom fill; If anything, there is a glut of Subspecialists - the ratio of PCP:subsp is the exact opposite in America as that of other industrialized nations - 30:70 vs. 70:30.