> To pay this off in 10 years, the monthly payment would be on the order of $3400.
Once employed, hospitals agree on some arrangement in which they help pay sometimes up to as much as 50% of their loans (HRSA alone pays $170k in loan repayment to primary care docs for 5 years of service in a shortage area). And I don't know what kind of doctors you guys have been hanging out with, but most make way more than $300k after only a handful of years of experience.
> It's not unheard of for some medical students to have loan debt exceeding $300k.
True, but as it turns out, most doctors are sons and daughters of rich folks (at least that's what sister tells me, who's doing her residency now). So those loan debt episodes are being paid by mommies and daddies, and it's rather rare for these doctors to ever feel the pangs of financial pain in their time.
> but most make way more than $300k after only a handful of years of experience.
'Eh, not really [1]. Most will wind up in the upper $100k region (most being in some form of primary care). Not after a handful of years, but 4+ yrs college, 4+ yrs medical school, then bare minimum 3 year residency (with most 4+), with each step an order of magnitude more difficult.
> most doctors are sons and daughters of rich folks
Many are, but since we're in the anecdata game, none of my friends were.
Not going to lose sleep over it, upper $100's is plenty to compensate for high debt in the long run. But to pretend its not extremely stressful for most is to be misinformed.
Lastly:
> 5 years of service in a shortage area
After spending the last 2 years in a qualifying region (though not for that purpose); topping off 12 yrs of post-high school with another 5 living somewhere you'd rather not be (to be polite) is no small feat. Thats 35 yrs old before you get a shot at living and working somewhere reasonable.
> True, but as it turns out, most doctors are sons and daughters of rich folks
> (at least that's what sister tells me, who's doing her residency now).
Lets pretend that anecdata is useful and assume that it is generalizable to the entire population of med students. Do you think the prevalence of rich kids is alarming? Possibly an indication that something needs to change in the financing of healthcare or healthcare education?
ADDENDUM Feel free to ignore this: (obviously you are morally bound to respond to the above;)
The way you speak about being the sons and daughters of rich kids seems to indicate that you and your sister feel separate from that group. Did you come from an affluent family?
Yes, clearly it is a problem that only the rich are able to have the resources to get ahead. But this is a much bigger problem than who's able to become a doctor and who's not, it has to do (imo) with the greater issues of society, like new parents being unable to provide high quality preschool education, mom and dad still working when kids are teenagers and need attention and guidance, and so on. I'm a fan of quasi-socialistic, progressive-taxing to ensure everyone gets the resources.
I'm from a brown immigrant family. Brown/Asian immigrants seem to be exceptions everywhere, in that they're usually poor starting out and still persevere and make it through medical schools and whatever else. My family now is doing quite okay, but is probably still below the average residency student's family. The way it looks to me (anecdata), the average residency student's family has a household income of 1mil+. My family's household income is barely 200k, so make of that what you will.
I'd say that a prevalence of rich kids is alarming, and not from an equality perspective or anything. It's alarming because an advanced and specialized economy like ours is at its most efficient when people are doing the jobs they're best suited for. If I'm well-suited to be a DBA and I'm instead doing something I'm much less well-suited for (like sales) then it's a societal net-loss[1]. Unless we assume there's a reason that the people who are best-suited or at least well-suited to be doctors are disproportionately rich, then we're probably winding up with poor/middle-class folks who'd make excellent doctors doing some other job they're less good at.
[1] This is not and should not be read as an argument that DBAs > sales or anything to that effect.
Odd, you must have replied concurrently with my deleting my post. If I ever delete something here on HN, I always double-check first to make sure that it hasn't received replies first to avoid this situation. It's only by casually re-reading this thread a day later that I amusingly discovered by deleted post had received a reply. =]
> most make way more than $300k after only a handful of years of experience.
I was referring to family physicians. They do not make this sort of money on average, especially not just out of residency. There are numerous serious physician compensation reports that will confirm this.
Yes, and who is complaining about how inner city minorities can't pay their medical school bills. Answer is that they never had the resources to get into it no matter how interested they were in it. So this sounds more of a tiny violin "wish I became a banker, like my dad" sort of thing.
Once employed, hospitals agree on some arrangement in which they help pay sometimes up to as much as 50% of their loans (HRSA alone pays $170k in loan repayment to primary care docs for 5 years of service in a shortage area). And I don't know what kind of doctors you guys have been hanging out with, but most make way more than $300k after only a handful of years of experience.
> It's not unheard of for some medical students to have loan debt exceeding $300k.
True, but as it turns out, most doctors are sons and daughters of rich folks (at least that's what sister tells me, who's doing her residency now). So those loan debt episodes are being paid by mommies and daddies, and it's rather rare for these doctors to ever feel the pangs of financial pain in their time.