'The best way we can say thanks is to erase this enormous financial burden ... a cost that was required to fight and win this war.'
In preparation for COVID-19 exposure, some of us have made the choice to move to temporary housing in an effort to protect our families. Similar to battle outcomes in China and Italy, dozens of our fellow physicians have become seriously ill with COVID-19.Healthcare workers at hospitals all over the country are told to reuse their PPE, even though the masks were designed for one-time use. Desperate to preserve their supplies, doctors and nurses have started keeping their masks in Tupperware.
During these four years, my colleagues and I deferred all income opportunities, as the hours spent studying and learning in the hospital far exceeded a 40-hour work week. After dedicating eight years to higher education and amassing hundreds of thousands of dollars of high interest-bound debt, we then spend up to a decade in residency and fellowship working 80 hours per week, often only making slightly above minimum wage.
For some of us, there is hope for loan forgiveness. Public Service Loan Forgiveness offers to wipe out federal loans after borrowers have worked 10 years in a not-for-profit clinical setting.
How much would complete forgiveness cost the nation? There is limited data on total medical education debt in the U.S. However, based on the average amount of student debt and percentage of physicians in debt for their training, one could estimate that the cost would be in the range of $10 billion. This might still seem like a large sum of money, but there is precedent for government-funded repayment for heroic work during a time of national crisis. After Sept.
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