Army Doctor

Wow. sb247's post is so close to spot-on accurate that I think he's been reading some diaries. I think a LOT of people sign up for HPSP because of that exact situation.

I had a few reasons to join beyond the financial, but unquestionably part of the reason was exactly what he had said - especially if you come from a background where no one in your family is a physician. I make more money than anyone else in my family in the military - let alone once I'm out. So the idea of making hundreds of thousands of dollars per year was no more real to me than reading it on drudgereport.

Trust me, and sb247, when I say that you will pay back your loans no matter what you do. Medical school loans are large, but this is not the same kind of student debt that you hear about all the time on the news. Those are people who spent 6 years in college getting a degree in bull$#!T so that they could move back in with their parents and get an entry level job as a telemarketer. We have definitely screwed our society by making it more or less essentially for any moderately-well paying job to have some kind of college education, but med school debt falls into a different category because after your training you're very, very likely to fall into a high-paying job, many of which have loan-repayment options. It's apples and oranges.

It's anecdotal, but two weeks ago I spoke with the wife of one of my colleagues. He's HPSP, she's civilian, both surgeons. He's slogging through the same crap that I am. She landed a job in the same town at a small hospital associated with a medical school. She takes no call. None. She makes twice what he does. She has to stay there for four years, and they repay her loans 100%. She has the research capabilities of the larger institution at her disposal, free resident labor, they feed her cases with a lot of autonomy in terms of what she wants to do. The catch: she's in a moderately sized city (not the boon docks, not Manhattan) and she makes less than she might in private practice - but still way more than I do. Yes, this is anecdotal, but for whatever it's worth they had trouble filling her position. She's been waiting for the unknown catch for 2 years now, and that preverbal hammer has not fallen. There are options out there.

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Army Doctor