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Comment by cncrnd | Hacker News Reader

Is anyone not going to med school because of debt? Not sure what problems this solves.

For the long commitment that doctors make and the debt they take on, they receive basically guaranteed highly paying employment for as long as they wish.

There's also a shortage of medical school spots, we can't create enough doctors.

I think this is probably an attempt to compete with other medical schools for top students. NYU is pretty well respected bit probably loses a lot of candidates to Harvard, Yale, etc.

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Perhaps as a back of a line thing - not those about to enter it. It is already infamously grueling. Graduating and being six figures in debt could try the patience of many. "Staying in school in a high stress environment till near my thirties is bad enough without being in debt practically big enough for a house for years afterwards. I'll just go into banking after four years so I can actually enjoy the money while I am young." Whether you want doctors with such am attitude is another question.

Banking and tech aren't guaranteed the way medicine is. Other fields are result based, and it's often easy to get fired and be replaced.

A risk averse person would rather stick to what they know (student life, exams) for a guaranteed reward.

The debt isn't really that much. Probably the average is 200k. You can pay that off within about 1-2 years of residency, and interest rates tend to be low since they're low risk loans for banks to give out.

> The debt isn't really that much. Probably the average is 200k. You can pay that off within about 1-2 years of residency, and interest rates tend to be low since they're low risk loans for banks to give out.

Please try looking at the numbers again. Assuming you pay off undergraduate loans, a private medical school will cost $30-45k a year (not including living costs, so tack on another $30k a year), so assuming ($150-$300,000) will be total assumed debt (not including books, unexpected expenses, etc) during those 4 years. Residency salary is basically stuck at around $50k/yearly for 3-5 years (based on residency type), you can contribute back to loans but there's not a chance you're paying that off in residency. (source: current medical resident)

I mean 1-2 years after residency. Most people taking on debt for medical school don't really see it as a huge risk, it's basically a guaranteed investment.

The big downside of medicine is the time in my opinion. 7 years of prime time, but some of the med students I know are enjoying it. A former classmate said it's less work than undergrad.

We can't create enough doctors because medical school is prohibitively expensive. Universal healthcare and universal higher education go hand in hand.

Wow, you are so confident saying this when you are wrong.

More people want to go to medical school than there are spots open. If you create more spots, you get more doctors. Cost is not a barrier to medical school, loans for this profession are very easy to obtain.

Wow, you are so confident when you provide literally zero evidence to back up your claim either.

Though that's not what I was addressing. I was addressing the criticism of universal healthcare that we'll somehow run out of doctors. The issue is it costs money for a school to run a med school. Making the government pay for it enables more med schools to be built.

> I think this is probably an attempt to compete with other medical schools for top students.

But what do they get from these top students? Clearly not tuition anymore!

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