It's the same in San Francisco, where we support returns to investors in residential real estate by banning new development since the 1960s and therefore doctor salaries don't afford a luxury lifestyle [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/03/business/economy/high-end...] and therefore we have a shortage of physicians.
San Francisco is also overwhelmingly young and healthy.
Between COVID and the millennial cohort in SF, that's not going to be true very much longer, if it is at all today.
This is because congress wont expand residencies so there arent enough doctors. Doctors make a bunch of money and can live anywhere they want, almost none of them want to live in bumfuck.
Remove the residency cap, allow foreign doctors to immigrate and quickly certify their skills, allow nurses to attend night school to become doctors, etc.
I agree this is the solution rural medicine needs.