Sunday, January 16, 2011
Medical school debt may be greater than earning potential
Health care "reform" needs to more seriously address the issue of cost of a medical education and plot that against current wages for less lucrative specialties such as pediatrics and family practice. It seems that if every college or medical student calculated their potential earnings and plotted that against the cost of attending four years of undergraduate college and then four years of medical school, they would reconsider their selection as a physician. Here are some rough numbers. The average cost including living expenses for undergraduate schools and medical school is approximately $40,000-$50,000 per year. It is conceivable that all of that is borrowed so that upon graduation, a medical student has over $320,000 in debt. If the doctor wants to pay this off over 10 years, he or she will be paying, approximately $4000 per month or $48,000 per year interest and principal payments. This does not take into consideration the cost of those years in medical school of lost earning potential. This is disastrous for medical students, young doctors and the field of medicine. So, when health care reform begins to start chipping away at a doctor's income, and raising expenses for a doctor to operate their business, politicians need to be aware of the cost burdens on our young doctors. Alternatively, the way things are going, we may have no doctors to take care of our kids and our families.
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2 comments:
I completely agree. I recently wrote a paper about how the magnitude of educational debt serves as a disincentive for medical students interested in primary care.
I attached a link to the online full text of the article. Check out the supplemental digtal content. It is a financial calculator that helps factor in one's debt when developing a financial plan after residency.
http://journals.lww.com/academicmedicine/Fulltext/2010/11000/Economic_Impact_of_a_Primary_Care_Career__A_Harsh.26.aspx
Martin,
I have reviewed your excellent article and it is spot on. The financial calculator will be a wake up call for physicians considering these primary care fields (as well as policy makers). The realities are harsh and I think practically speaking the only way to make these career choices is for the government to forgive the medical school and college debt if these physicians promise to provide compensated care for a certain time, to a certain group of patients, ie medicaid or medicare possibly in certain areas. They would still would be compensated but they may have to "promise" the delivery to these populations as a way of forgiving debt. If this is impossible to achieve then I am afraid that under current circumstances the debt to practice income is prohibitive for these career choices.
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