PSLF revisions: New budget proposal screws anyone in PI. Forum

[Tanicius]

Lol. The med students are shitting themselves on reddit.

Yeah, they have even more reason to than we do!

I think this highlights how immoral and unprecedented it would be to fuck ppl over retroactively. I mean, that's obviously possible by Congressional statue, but I think and hope that Tan is right on this one.

I honestly don't understand why med students need the PI forgiveness. Don't almost all of them start making lots of money *eventually*? Yes, I know it often takes 10+ years of hardwork before you start raking in those six-figure checks, but as I understand it, not all medical work qualifies for PSLF -- it's only public or nonprofit hospitals that do it, and those hospitals don't pay a lot of money.

The point you were trying to make seems to have flipped about halfway through your third sentence.

My point is, most medical doctors don't work at nonprofits or government hospitals for a career. I know of several med students who are planning, for example, to work at a nonprofit just for ten years so they can get their loans erased and then go into private practice. That seems like the thing this new proposal is trying to get rid of -- i.e., abusing the 10-year time window just so you can make more money in the long run.

I guess it does make sense if there are underserved communities whose only source of medical care is through nonprofit or government hospitals, but as far as I knew, that's not normal in the United States.

Whatever, I don't know anything about this. I'm talking out of my ass like one of those villainous lawyers on Grey's Anatomy who sues doctors over nothing. "I'm not a doctor, but..."

[cron1834]

+1 to Midwest.

Rural hospitals are underserved and don't have big budgets. Getting docs to practice there seems to require some incentivizing. Lots of hospitals are nonprofits, hence the forgiveness.

[californiauser]

My point is, most medical doctors don't work at nonprofits or government hospitals for a career. I know of several med students who are planning, for example, to work at a nonprofit just for ten years so they can get their loans erased and then go into private practice. That seems like the thing this new proposal is trying to get rid of -- i.e., abusing the 10-year time window just so you can make more money in the long run.

I guess it does make sense if there are underserved communities whose only source of medical care is through nonprofit or government hospitals, but as far as I knew, that's not normal in the United States.

Whatever, I don't know anything about this. I'm talking out of my ass like one of those villainous lawyers on Grey's Anatomy who sues doctors over nothing. "I'm not a doctor, but..."

neither do most lawyers (in PI or for the government)

[Tanicius]

My point is, most medical doctors don't work at nonprofits or government hospitals for a career. I know of several med students who are planning, for example, to work at a nonprofit just for ten years so they can get their loans erased and then go into private practice. That seems like the thing this new proposal is trying to get rid of -- i.e., abusing the 10-year time window just so you can make more money in the long run.

I guess it does make sense if there are underserved communities whose only source of medical care is through nonprofit or government hospitals, but as far as I knew, that's not normal in the United States.

Whatever, I don't know anything about this. I'm talking out of my ass like one of those villainous lawyers on Grey's Anatomy who sues doctors over nothing. "I'm not a doctor, but..."

neither do most lawyers (in PI or for the government)

Yeah I felt a little bit crooked writing that. lol

[Lightworks]

Covering ~$25-30K a year in loan payments seems like a small price to pay for MDs. As a tax payer, I have no problem whatsoever subsidizing med school loans for doctors who take those kinds of positions, especially if it helps dissuade potential GP's from going into specialties.

[ColbyBryant]

I honestly don't understand why med students need the PI forgiveness. Don't almost all of them start making lots of money *eventually*? Yes, I know it often takes 10+ years of hardwork before you start raking in those six-figure checks, but as I understand it, not all medical work qualifies for PSLF -- it's only public or nonprofit hospitals that do it, and those hospitals don't pay a lot of money.

The point you were trying to make seems to have flipped about halfway through your third sentence.[/quote]


No this isn't true. Though any doc going into group practice or managed care (ie kaiser or sharp) is private and can't get PSLF, all major academic hospitals are non profit. Though they pay considerably less than private within a specialty, there are still tons of Subspecialty docs at these hospitals making TONS of money. Also, residency counts towards PSLF if done at one of these hospitals. And these specialties take more years to achieve, thus more years towards PSLF with low PAYE payments.

Extreme example would be a med student w 350k of loans going into neurosurgery and then Pursuing a spine fellowship. 7 years of residency, 2 years of fellowship starting 1st year at 55k and capping out at around 80k. 9 years of PAYE and PSLF down. These super specialized docs mostly work in academic centers due to the rarity of diseases they treat. 1st year attending level may make 400k in this field. After this year debt is discharged on PSLF. By 5th year of practice can be making >700k, or move to private and average 1 million per year. This is an insane loophole where the most profitable sub specialties are the longest residencies and thus require the least post-residency/fellowship commitment to the very academic hospitals that are most likely to advance their career further.

More conservative example- internal medicine resident 3 years, chief resident 1 year, cardiology fellowship 3 years, interventional cardiology fellowship 1 year. 2 years of junior faculty level cardiology paying 250-300k. Loans forgiven. Free to either advance up academic ladder to around 400k professorship or move to private practice where salaries average 550k.

Source- brother is md. Best friend is md. She is sitting next to me.

[04102014]

http://abovethelaw.com/2014/03/changes- ... -the-mark/

Lolz.

[SemperLegal]

No this isn't true. Though any doc going into group practice or managed care (ie kaiser or sharp) is private and can't get PSLF, all major academic hospitals are non profit. Though they pay considerably less than private within a specialty, there are still tons of Subspecialty docs at these hospitals making TONS of money. Also, residency counts towards PSLF if done at one of these hospitals. And these specialties take more years to achieve, thus more years towards PSLF with low PAYE payments.

Extreme example would be a med student w 350k of loans going into neurosurgery and then Pursuing a spine fellowship. 7 years of residency, 2 years of fellowship starting 1st year at 55k and capping out at around 80k. 9 years of PAYE and PSLF down. These super specialized docs mostly work in academic centers due to the rarity of diseases they treat. 1st year attending level may make 400k in this field. After this year debt is discharged on PSLF. By 5th year of practice can be making >700k, or move to private and average 1 million per year. This is an insane loophole where the most profitable sub specialties are the longest residencies and thus require the least post-residency/fellowship commitment to the very academic hospitals that are most likely to advance their career further.

More conservative example- internal medicine resident 3 years, chief resident 1 year, cardiology fellowship 3 years, interventional cardiology fellowship 1 year. 2 years of junior faculty level cardiology paying 250-300k. Loans forgiven. Free to either advance up academic ladder to around 400k professorship or move to private practice where salaries average 550k.

Source- brother is md. Best friend is md. She is sitting next to me.

Huge difference. We want to incentive as many people to become doctors as possible, especially people who are good enough at math to realize how bad of an economic choice medicine is for people with sufficient grades to get into medical school. The same can't be said about graduates in general (and especially in the law). Of course, we could just may lawyers more or make medical school free for people who pledge a certain number of hours a year to Health Professional Shortage Area and actually address the problem head on.

[twenty]

No this isn't true. Though any doc going into group practice or managed care (ie kaiser or sharp) is private and can't get PSLF, all major academic hospitals are non profit. Though they pay considerably less than private within a specialty, there are still tons of Subspecialty docs at these hospitals making TONS of money. Also, residency counts towards PSLF if done at one of these hospitals. And these specialties take more years to achieve, thus more years towards PSLF with low PAYE payments.

Extreme example would be a med student w 350k of loans going into neurosurgery and then Pursuing a spine fellowship. 7 years of residency, 2 years of fellowship starting 1st year at 55k and capping out at around 80k. 9 years of PAYE and PSLF down. These super specialized docs mostly work in academic centers due to the rarity of diseases they treat. 1st year attending level may make 400k in this field. After this year debt is discharged on PSLF. By 5th year of practice can be making >700k, or move to private and average 1 million per year. This is an insane loophole where the most profitable sub specialties are the longest residencies and thus require the least post-residency/fellowship commitment to the very academic hospitals that are most likely to advance their career further.

More conservative example- internal medicine resident 3 years, chief resident 1 year, cardiology fellowship 3 years, interventional cardiology fellowship 1 year. 2 years of junior faculty level cardiology paying 250-300k. Loans forgiven. Free to either advance up academic ladder to around 400k professorship or move to private practice where salaries average 550k.

Source- brother is md. Best friend is md. She is sitting next to me.

Damn. Law school is looking worse and worse.

[midwest17]

TIL doctors are better at exploiting the law than lawyers are.

[Rahviveh]

Huge difference. We want to incentive as many people to become doctors as possible, especially people who are good enough at math to realize how bad of an economic choice medicine is for people with sufficient grades to get into medical school. The same can't be said about graduates in general (and especially in the law). Of course, we could just may lawyers more or make medical school free for people who pledge a certain number of hours a year to Health Professional Shortage Area and actually address the problem head on.

Whose side are you on man? Doctors don't respect us, stop advocating for them.

[ColbyBryant]

TIL doctors are better at exploiting the law than lawyers are.

Nah these docs aren't exploiting the law. I mean zero loans have actually been forgiven under PSLF and most Subspecialty docs ain't planning on it. It was just a point to illustrate how the current wording of the law forgot to take doctors and the structure of residency into account. Hospitals are non profits.

For docs the law will Need to be reworded to include only rural primary care. The are the ones who need it.

[SemperLegal]

Huge difference. We want to incentive as many people to become doctors as possible, especially people who are good enough at math to realize how bad of an economic choice medicine is for people with sufficient grades to get into medical school. The same can't be said about graduates in general (and especially in the law). Of course, we could just may lawyers more or make medical school free for people who pledge a certain number of hours a year to Health Professional Shortage Area and actually address the problem head on.

Whose side are you on man? Doctors don't respect us, stop advocating for them.

I sleep with a med student.

Law students, your move.

[FinanceStudent28]

I agree with person who said schools should be responsible for the debt.

Too much incentive for B.S. right now.

[worldtraveler]

I agree with person who said schools should be responsible for the debt.

Too much incentive for B.S. right now.

That would be nice but the loans are in our names, not theirs.

[Nomo]

White house petition:

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petiti ... t/wkqnqBCH

[bearsfan23]

I'm pretty confused by what I'm reading in the budget proposal and some of the stuff I'm seeing on here. If this passes, as a current law student interested in PI/Gov work, it looks like it could be bad. But, can anyone actually answer these 2 questions:

1. The wording in the proposal in regards to $57,500 specifically refers to undergraduate loans. Is there anything that actually says this would apply to grad loans?

2. The proposal also mentions pre-2015 students being able to stick with their current plan. Is this not actually true?

Tia, hopefully this doesn't pass in any form

[cactusflower]

Med students in the Reddit forum from the link above seem to think there is NO grandfathering in for 2015 and prior PSLF students...

Is there a reason we are more optimistic?

[twenty]

Is there a reason we are more optimistic?

The sheer unlikelihood, mostly. It seems unfathomable that the DoED got a whole bunch of students to take out loans under the pretext that they'd be forgiven in ten years, wait for a whole bunch of students to go on the program expecting to do exactly that, and then LOLNO JUST KIDDING at the cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars of student debt.

[swampman]

Med students in the Reddit forum from the link above seem to think there is NO grandfathering in for 2015 and prior PSLF students...

Is there a reason we are more optimistic?

There is no explicit grandfathering of PSLF in the budget proposal, that's indisputable. BUT there is explicit grandfathering of the old PAYE/IBR plans, which suggests that they are very much concerned with not screwing people over who made decisions to take out loans based on government promises at the time. This suggests that it is an oversight and in the actual law, where contrary to a proposal exact wording is very important, PSLF will be grandfathered as well.

Somewhere in these threads we have a link to the guy at a think tank who thought up these changes, a lady who blogs about this stuff (she has a blog guys!), and a friend-of-a-friend at the Dept of Ed. who all say uncapped PSLF will be grandfathered.

So there's a reason to be more optimistic. But really, nobody has any fucking idea.

[A. Nony Mouse]

We want to incentive as many people to become doctors as possible, especially people who are good enough at math to realize how bad of an economic choice medicine is for people with sufficient grades to get into medical school.

Except the AMA or whatever association it is already severely caps entrance into med school, so what good is incentivizing more people to try? (Or am I just missing something? (highly possible))

1. The wording in the proposal in regards to $57,500 specifically refers to undergraduate loans. Is there anything that actually says this would apply to grad loans?

This has come up already. The concern is that what that language means is that the undergraduate cap of $57,500 will be applied (henceforth) to grad loans, too - that is, "undergraduate" means "the same cap that an independent undergrad faces," not "loans to undergrads."

(This is how I read it. But no one really knows yet.)

[LSL]

White house petition:

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petiti ... t/wkqnqBCH

While I like the idea of the petition, the law student in me wonders if there will be a problem with the petition refering to the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program as the "Public Interest Service Loan Forgiveness (PILF)" program.

Just pointing that out. No idea if it'd be an issue . They're getting a lot of signatures but it's still pretty low. If it needs to be changed, someone should do that now.

[worldtraveler]

I contacted Harkin's office about this and am waiting to hear back.

Sounds like he was already busy standing up for PI lawyers though:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/0 ... f=politics

[timbs4339]

I thought the petition limit was only 25K signatures? Must have changed it with all the people petitioning the government to recognize Mars on the Security Council.

Somebody needs to make a petition about skin in the game for schools. Let's hear some real solutions, not passing on costs to students to "incentivize" 18 year olds who can't even legally drink to make rational life choices (or, for that matter, 21 year olds who spent the last four years drinking copious amounts of alcohol they aren't supposed to have).

[cotiger]

I thought the petition limit was only 25K signatures? Must have changed it with all the people petitioning the government to recognize Mars on the Security Council.

Somebody needs to make a petition about skin in the game for schools. Let's hear some real solutions, not passing on costs to students to "incentivize" 18 year olds who can't even legally drink to make rational life choices (or, for that matter, 21 year olds who spent the last four years drinking copious amounts of alcohol they aren't supposed to have).

I've posted this before, but here's my solution..

Cap the amount of loans given out by the feds for law school at $100k. The max tuition schools could charge and have sticker students borrow exclusively from the government would be ~$15k/yr (assuming COL loans). If a school wanted to set its tuition at $50k, they of course could, but those loans (and thus the assumption of risk) would come from the school itself. Schools that were confident that they could place students at a rate that justifies a high level of tuition would do so; schools where 40% of their grads are completely unemployed would price at the 15k/year rate or else quickly go out of business due to massive defaults.

This would constrain law schools' pricing in a relatively organic, market-based way.