"Rare" is an overloaded word, so let me clarify: I asked one of my friends who's a general surgeon, and he estimates he does 1 to 2 open cholecystectomies or appendectomies per year. It falls in an unfortunate gray zone where the cases aren't frequent enough for you to build up skills, but they are frequent enough that you can't just forward all the cases on to one or two experienced surgeons in the area. (They would get incredibly backed up.) And sometimes a case starts laparoscopic and has to be converted to open partway through, so you can't always anticipate in advance that a senior surgeon will need to be available.

I agree that robotic surgery is not a solution for this. We haven't even got L5 long haul trucking yet, so full auto robotic surgery in the real world, as opposed to controlled environments, is probably decades away.