Identify and describe three reasons there may be a physician shortage rather than a surplus in the United States.
The number of physicians in the United States has increased rapidly in the last four decades showing about a 218 percent increase between the years 1965 to 2005. The Graduate Medical Education National Advisory Committee (GMENAC) reported in 1980 that there would be a surplus of physicians of 70,000 in 1990, and roughly 140,000 in 2000. But, by the early 2000’s some observers were raising the spectre of a physician shortage, especially among some specialty groups.
Part of the response as to why there is a shortage lies in the way that differing methodologies and assumptions yield varying physician requirement and supply projections. The three reasons are explained as follows:
1. First, although managed care remains a formidable force in the organization and delivery of health care, its more restrictive elements have been blunted due to widespread physician and patient dissatisfaction, particularly with limits on choice.
Medicine’s distaste of tightly controlled reimbursement and of non-physicians’ attempts to control their work fueled much of this backlash.

The outcome of this has been a movement away from captioned insurance arrangements back to coverage that more closely resembles fee-for-service plans, especially preferred provider organizations.
Physicians and patients seem to prefer choice to efficiency, which will add pressure for more physicians and is the first of several possible factors fueling fears of a new shortage.

2. Secondly, 49.5 percent of the entire class of medical students was females which were a remarkable feature but they failed to do the same work previously done predominantly by male physicians. The reasons for this are that women still do a majority of tasks surrounding the raising of children and maintaining a home,