even in the US a lot of doctors say this because it is usually less of a pain in the ass than filling out referral paperwork to specialists that cost more for the patient anyways.

part of the problem in the US is that at least some medical practices/hospitals measure patient satisfaction as a metric to evaluate performance, but what is good for the patient and what makes them happy is not necessarily correlated. it's a factor into how the opioid epidemic got as bad as it did in the US. and also i'd imagine if you kept telling people this for decades and they didn't listen people might just not bother.