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AOA President Nichols will consider responding only to comments from self-identified DOs and osteopathic medical students. Anonymous comments will not be considered for response. Please be aware that comments that are mean-spirited, disrespectful, and off-topic may be removed from the blog.

Monday, August 10, 2009

One Way to Repay Medical School Loans

As many of you know first-hand, medical school graduates face a growing mountain of debt as they enter the workforce these days. Debt for medical school student loans alone can be upwards of $150,000. If you’re facing a large amount of debt, you may want to consider the National Health Service Corps (NHSC).

NHSC provides health care to Americans who, for economic, geographic, or cultural barriers, are prevented from seeking and receiving the health care they deserve. As a member of the NHSC, you’ll practice in one of the NHSC sites, located in federally designated health professional shortage areas (HSPAs). You’ll be paid a regionally competitive salary, provided with learning and teaching opportunities, and can qualify for repayment of educational loans up to $50,000. To qualify for the $50,000 in loan repayment, you must:

- Provide primary care service in an HSPA for a minimum of two years
- Work 40 hours a week in the clinical practice of your profession
- Be a U.S. citizen
- Be free of judgment liens arising from Federal debt
- Have no existing service commitment

Currently, 4,000 NHSC clinicians provide primary care to nearly four million people. That leaves some 50 million children and adults without proper health care. As an NHSC member, you will be doing your part to enhance the lives and well-beings of thousands of people, while reducing your student debts at the same time.

I hope you will take some time to consider whether or not this opportunity is right for you. For more information on the NHSC, visit their Web site at http://nhsc.bhpr.hrsa.gov/

Larry

Posted by lwicklessdo at 15:47:36. Filed under: 2009 President’s Blog

Comments

I appreaciate this idea. This is a great oppurtuninty for students. With that said this 150K number that the AOA and AMA throw around is an absurd number. The mean number should not be used in this case as clearly their is a negative skew from students not paying a cent for school

A more realistic number to look at would be the median, which would most likely reflect a student debt number closer to 200,000 for the average student coming out of med school.

Many DO programs have tuitions at or above 40K per year. How any avg. of 150K is derived to somehow represent the current state of student debt is beyond me.

Posted by michigan DO at Monday, August 10, 2009 20:28:22

I agree with Michigan DO. And the NHSC program is great if you do the program in school, but there are very few of these awarded, and the 50k for two years of commitment is barely a dent especially once you start looking at all the interest that is accruing. How about some other ideas, or working on getting NHSC expanded.

Posted by thewayitshouldbe at Tuesday, August 11, 2009 01:47:36

50,000 is a nice way to help someone out who actually wants to live in these underserved/rural areas, but hardly enough to entice someone there who has no desire to work those areas or conditions. If the AOA/AMA really wanted to help its students out, they could they could work on decreasing this ridiculous interest rate on our student loans. You can refinance a house in this terrible market to 5.5 percent and get an equity loan at 5 percent, why are we locked in at 6.8? I could give up my house or file bankruptcy and that loan would be gone. But the student loan is with us till death and is basically an investment which will allow us to make 2 million or more then the average worker over a lifetime and there is nothing we can do to lower its interest rate. The second thing that could be done is to raise the amount of the subsidized loan from 8.5k to say about 25k or more.

Posted by DMUguy at Tuesday, August 11, 2009 19:40:42

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