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Dear Anonymous,
There are many perspectives on this, but in order to best answer your question, I'd appreciate some more background. Why did you fail the USMLE by one point? How well did you do on the COMLEX? What are your other grades, EC's, and research like? What year are you in your training, and what kind of Letters of Recommendation do you have lined up, or expect to have lined up?
No matter what the answer is to the above questions, I highly recommend taking the USMLE again. Anesthesiology is a specialty which waxes and wanes greatly in competitiveness, and at this time, is on an upward swing of competitiveness. With this said, there are quite a few programs, and while a number of them are marginal at best, depending on how you do on re-take, you have a shot to gain admission to an acceptable program. I won't lie to you, so here are two very important points. One, you have a very large flag on your application, and it will be an uphill battle; You must optimize each other section of your application in order to overcome this. Two, there are more programs than you think with marginal training at best. Choose wisely, and make SURE to investigate programs before applying to them. I cannot stress this point enough. With your application, any program who says that it is "not much of a problem failing Step 1" is 99% likelihood to fall within the programs you do not want to attend.
I hope this post helped you in your question. Please feel free to contact me in this thread or by private message if you require further assistance.
