Relevance of today's primary care physicians

Recently, our group at work was hit with sickness: one girl got acute bronchitis, one had a cold, and another probably had acute bronchitis as well but...never went to get checked out, which really is the whole point of this post. From said coworker's adamant refusal (stubborn reluctance?) to go see a primary care physician to a news report about the high percentage of over/misdiagnoses probably due to greater reliance on online sources (WebMD), it seems as if the relevance of health care delivered by primary care physicians (PCP's) is decreasing.

People can easily go to webmd.com to look up symptoms for many diseases like breast cancer and be convinced that they have said disease.

I'm probably exaggerating. Growing up in a frugal yet health conscious family, I've only gone to get check ups from a pediatrician when an external source required it (e.g. school, work). Each time, the check up was very uneventful. I was a normal, healthy girl. And so beyond allowing me to join the school's swim team or to work, those check ups never seemed very worthwhile. So, it's easy for me to say that the services provided by a PCP are not relevant to my life, but it's beginning to feel the same for many other people, too. What do you think?

If people are using PCP's less and less and thus rendering their role less and less relevant to our health, I wouldn't be surprised. On the way to work the other day, I noticed how many radio advertisements there are promoting medication for all kinds of diseases. (Are you suffering from <insert random-never-heard-of-before-disease>? Are you having trouble sleeping? Do you sometimes get up with aching joints? Is your vision getting blurry? If so, you might have said-disease. Miracle-drug-A can help. Ask your doctor about it today!) Listening to these so much, who wouldn't be tempted to over/misdiagnose? I mean, PCP's are still useful because you'll need them to fill out prescriptions, but you can probably get those from specialists, right? Or, even if you do go to your PCP to ask about the disease and medication, the tables have turned: people are not going to their PCP's for check ups or out of concern for an unsettling, persistent symptom, they are going to their PCP with an idea of what their diagnosis might already be, which they make known to their PCP. Does this affect their treatment?

I think so.