HPSP Scholarships pay for med school plus a monthly stipend. They pay for any med school in the country. Payback is a year for a year, so for a physician it is a four year payback on active duty as an officer (serving as a physician). Payback may take place before a residency or after a residency. http://www.goarmy.com/amedd/education/hpsp.html
The Uniformed Services University of Health sciences is another route for a completely debt free medical school education. Again, the student owes time as an active duty physician as payback. http://www.usuhs.mil/
There once was a time when these scholarships were not very competitive, but they are quite competitive now. Just about every young person my kids know who are at a point of applying to med school have contacted my husband for advice. There is an incredible amount of misinformation and rumor about these scholarships floating around the pre-med world.
(my husband took an HPSP scholarship many years ago, and served on active duty as a Naval flight surgeon before doing his residency - which he chose to do at a major military hospital. He chose to remain with military medicine as a career. We have lived in georgeous places and he has had the opportunity to work in many areas of medicine that would not normally be available for a physician. He has also served two tours in combat zones - Iraq and Afghanistan. For a physician it was an interesting and rewarding experience. Most of our friends who took an HPSP scholarship did their four years of payback (often overseas -Germany, Japan, Spain, Korea for example) and then got out and have had happy careers in the civilian world.
Very few of our physicians’ friends kid attend medical schools…among those who do, most of them are daughters.The female physicians usually are a sources of supplemental income within the family and they go part-time after having kids. It’s not bad life after all the loans are paid.
We just had dinner last night with a Stanford medical student whose both parents are physicians. He is considering getting an MBA because he said a lot of the high compensation come from healthcare management.
There are a lot of medical school graduates, but that doesn’t mean it will alleviate waiting times to see doctors because many of them will not go into patient care.
UCB, the figures you gave in post #17 don’t mean anything when they are barely making 50k gross in residency followed by fellowship. Do the numbers with 50k income…not good.
There are many opportunities for “indentured servitude” if one is willing to sign up to serve in rural primary care programs in return for debt forgiveness. I can’t speak for other specialties, but not a bad deal for primary care docs.
Assuming the doctor wants to retire someday, subtract another $18K for the 401(k), 403(b), or 457 plan. Now we’re down to around $60K spendable income, not poor but by no means well-to-do.
I read Dr. Jauhar’s book because I’ve read his columns in the NY Times and am a fan of his writing. I don’t know his particular income numbers but he writes of the great difficulty he faced trying to live in NYC on his hospital salary, probably not far different from the $60K (or $77K) estimate.
I don’t know if the book is a warning in general about medicine, just about the pressure of trying to make ends meet in expensive cities like NYC. But Dr. Jauhar writes convincingly of the pressures doctors in such a setting face to bring in money by questionable medical practices. After reading this book I’d hate to live in NYC and face an illness knowing how many doctors have sold out and just do procedure after procedure to bring in money.
I haven’t read the book and don’t know the details, so these are comments that are more in general:
There are several MD/PhD programs where because of the latter, the tuition for the MD program is waived, and they get a small stipend. In fact I know someone doing just that because she was not from an affluent family and didn’t want to be saddled with debt.
If the doc is flexible about where s/he’s willing to practice, there are many institutions where that will begin paying off the debt in return for practicing with them.
Cardiologists, if they do interventional cardiology, potentially make a lot more money that debts of this magnitude are quite manageable.
Reply #17 was for the post residency pay level, after assuming forbearance during residency, based on the scenario in the AAMC debt pamphlet.
What it means is that you should only become a physician if it is a calling, and you can live on a low maintenance budget for at least two decades after high school graduation. Some of your college classmates will match your post residency take home pay in their first bachelor’s degree job, while others will match after several years of work experience.
Just a pure speculation here. Could this (i.e., more female premeds than the male premeds) be more true at the colleges which physician’s kids may attend? The colleges which physician’s kids may attend usually mean the colleges with more students from a well-to-do family.
This reminds me of something DS told us in his sophomore year in college. He said at one time when he walked into the first meet for a lab or TA session at the beginning of a semester, He thought he had gone to a “wrong” place like going to a women’s club by mistake. This was because he was the only male student in that room at that moment. He said he felt he was an “outlier” there. We do not know why he told us this then. He was likely not very enthusiastic about being a premed at that time. (He actually did not do much EC that is specifically required for a “typical” premed, e.g., he did not “shadow a doctor” like most premeds might do. One CCer told us it was likely his school’s name kind of saved him while he was applying.)
I once read a chart published by his college showing how many students were applying to med schools each year since, say, 1960. There were much more such students several decades ago (say, 1970-1985) than recent years. (BTW, now, it seems even fewer students apply to law schools.) Maybe being in the finance industry or the wall street is the new fav for the majority of “competitive” students nowadays.
Oh, the wife of one of my previous colleagues had completed med school and residency and then was working full time for less than two years and then became a part-time physician at a regional clinic. For their family, taking care of their babies at home was more important than developing her career. I also knew two other families where the two-income family became a one-income family right after they had two babies/young children. It was also the wife who gave up her career to stay home taking care of baby/young child. We suspect that this family may receive some sizable inheritance so they really do not need the second income.
Whatever “EC requirement” you are referring to is nothing compared to having grown up in a physician’s family and (hopefully) being aware of what a physician’s life is like.
All practices that I have come into contact with in recent years use electronic health records. After set up it is just more efficient and leads to better outcomes.
mom2collegekids wrote:
Yes, the kids of the very affluent can graduate debt free…
I wouldn’t be too sure about that. Nearly ALL of my friends have the same rule…“We’ll pay for 4 years, but after that, it’s on you, so better figure it out carefully.”
mom2collegekids wrote:
That may be so amongst the upper middle/low-upper class (the $125k-250k set), but not really for the really affluent.
What, in particular are you referring to and what are you basing your opinion on?
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My response was part of the above convo.
Many of the very affluent are paying or help-paying for their kids’ med schools.
Not every freshly-minted doc is graduating with a ton of debt. We’ve seen it here on CC. Some kids have opted to save money by choosing large merit undergrads, so that their parents will help them with med school.
The word has been getting out for awhile now that attending a “big name” school is little/no help for getting into med school…and that admissions is mostly about grades, mcat score, LORs, and ECs. So, attending a nice LAC or mid-tier flagship for a small amount can mean much less debt for professional school.
Maybe, maybe not. I asked you what you are basing that on.
What I told you is that nearly all if not all of my friends have voiced the same opinion which is that the kid gets 4 years and after that, it’s work, scholarship or loans. Are you making assumptions about the income level we are talking about here?
“. Yes, the kids of the very affluent can graduate debt free”
Our family does not belong in this category BY FAR, not any close at all. We just choose to use our retirement funds to finance D’s Med. School as an award for her hard work earning free tuition UG along with her wise decision choosing UG which has offerred her full tuition Merit. Everything above is a complete opposite with the most pre-meds and more so with Ds’ Med. School classmates. Most choose highly selective Ivy’s / Elite colleges that do not offer Merit awards. Most families did not choose to deep into their retirement funds, frankly, rightlully so after paying huge tuition for UG. So, “very affluent” is not required. Great planning, wise decisions are the MUST…and while we did not start planning when she was 5 y o, it has happened by default at this tender age when I told her that her school is her #1 thing, not even her favorite sport practices. She just took it to heart…or maybe she realized that there is no chance for being at practice until after the homework is complete and it had to be completed very well.
Benefits of EMRs probably increase with larger practices where many physicians may benefit from easier access to the records of a patient who is seeing someone other than his/her regular primary physician. The big multispecialty medical practices went EMR years before. A solo practice, on the other hand, may see only costs with minimal benefits.
I know two physicians who retired early because using the EMR was frustrating and felt like a waste of their time. One’s system asked them to re-enter the same information for each visit. They’d spend more time inputting than actually talking to or treating the patient. The burdens of this system seem to fall heaviest on primary care physicians.
In D’s medical school class of 150, when asked how many planned on becoming primary care physicians, 6 raised their hands. It could be the debt load, but it could also be lack of status, (if non-medical providers are going to be going to be licensed to do the same work), or wanting to do more challenging cases.
As the numbers show, very few medical students can graduate debt free. Most of those accepted are accepted to only one school so it’s take it or leave it. There is no choice based on cost. So physicians have to make money to live and pay down the debt. It makes taking Medicaid patients unaffordable.
One thing that could be done to make taking Medicaid patients more palatable would be to allow physicians to deduct the costs of caring for Medicaid patients from their taxes, like charitable contributions. That is, if the normal fee for something is $500. but Medicaid only reimbursed $50. then the $450 ‘lost’ could be deducted the same as charity.