The number of doctors in the United States of America directly impacts the communities served by these doctors and plays an important role in how the country and its citizens approach care healthcare. The United States experienced a surplus of doctors in the 1980s and was subsequently affected in several ways. However, many experts today have said that there is currently a shortage of doctors in the United States or, at the very least, that there will be a shortage in the near future. The state of a national surplus or shortage of doctors has many implications, some of which are quite harmful to society. However, there are some remedies that can be implemented to attempt to correct the problems, or alleviate some of their symptoms. Just as the economy goes through its cycles, from bear to bull and back again, so does the number of doctors around the world. the country. In the 1960s, the government began an attempt to create more doctors using various methods. One such method was to reward medical schools for training a certain number of doctors (Bernstein 1013). This would give medical schools an incentive to accept more students and allow students to fully graduate and attend residency programs. Another similar method was to give a monetary reward to residency programs for providing undergraduate medical training. This was a total of approximately $7 billion, a sum large enough to “pay the tuition and living expenses of every medical student in the United States” with a large portion left over (Bernstein 1013). Because of these actions taken by the government, many more doctors were created, causing a surplus of doctors from the 1980s until the late 1990s, although this claim was based on... half of the document... lve some of the effects of the shortage of doctors. However, increasing the number of foreign residents in training would decrease the number of residency positions that could be filled by American students. In this way, it can be said that there are solutions that could correct the situation, but these solutions may influence another trend or factor in a harmful way. Many experts have said that there has been a surplus of doctors in the past, but that there will soon be a shortage of doctors. This shortage will have been caused by many factors and is expected to have various effects on society, both immediate and long-term. Solutions to this deficiency have been proposed, but a good balance must be found between these many solutions and factors. However, once this balance is found, long-term remediation of the physician shortage can begin.