The United States is grappling with a significant physician shortage in 2025, a challenge that will profoundly shape the experiences of today’s premeds, medical students, and early-career doctors. Recent data paint a sobering picture: the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) projects a shortfall of up to 86,000 physicians by 2036 under current trends aamc.org. This gap is especially acute in primary care, where demand for services far outstrips supply.

TL;DR: Primary care in America is in crisis. Medical students are increasingly skipping family medicine, internal medicine, and pediatrics in favor of specialties; as a result, only about one-third of new primary care residency slots are filled by U.S. MD graduates. Meanwhile, roughly 75 million Americans (22% of the population) live in primary care shortage areas, and by 2037 the U.S. is projected to be short ~87,000 primary care physicians. Contributing factors include mass