medical student debt – The Health Care Blog

Medical Students: The Anti-Millionaires

Feb 13, 2014• 17

By Daniel Coleman

A few months ago, CBS Moneywatch published an article entitled “$1 million mistake: Becoming a doctor.” Aside from the possibility that devoting one’s life to helping others might be considered a mistake, I was struck by the “$1 million” figure.

Was it actually that much? I mean, $1 million is a lot of money. When I was younger, millionaires seemed a rarefied breed. They drove expensive cars and had houses with names like “Le Troquet” or “Brandywine Vale.” The figure was supposedly calculated using the following factors:

The cost of school, inclusive of tuition, fees and insurance
The interest on the loans incurred to pay for the above items
The income lost by not working full-time for 10 years, assuming an average income of $50,000 per year

Before coming to medical school, I worked in the pharmaceutical industry. I even turned down a hefty promotion to start my education as soon as possible, rather than defer for a year or two.

Thus, my back-of-the-envelope calculations made it fairly obvious that, including benefits, bonuses, and potential promotions, my medical decision was not a $1 million mistake, but was more like a $1.3 million dollar disaster.

Of course, people tell me that I’ll be profitable and that I’m a good credit risk, but what I really am is one of a rarefied breed that drive economy cars and have houses with names like “Apt. #203.” What I really am is an anti-millionaire.

The Real Problem With Med Student Debt

Jan 28, 2014• 11

By Chhabra, Joseph & Herigon

America might never agree on how much doctors deserve to earn. But there ought to be much less debate on the immense debt today’s medical students incur on the way to becoming doctors.

Few people are more aware of the stress of medical student debt than med students themselves, and there’s evidence that it affects our specialty and practice decisions later on down the line.

Enter this tweetchat. What began as a typical med student complaint about their debt load evolved into a provocative discussion about the underlying factors and potential solutions to the debt problem.

We’ve incorporated some notes explaining perhaps unfamiliar concepts, but otherwise this is the unvarnished product of a few med students procrastinating on a Sunday night.

Allan Joseph (AJ): The easiest way to tell if med-student debt is becoming an acute problem is if the demand for medical-school spots (easily measured by the number of applicants) is declining relative to the supply. That’s just not happening. In fact, the opposite is.