Team spirit
In the midst of addressing the nation’s economic recovery plans and appealing for former Governor George Ryan’s release from prison, U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin (D.-Ill.) penciled in time to
listen to the future.
Last week he sat down with several medical students at Southern Illinois
University School of Medicine and heard their thoughts on two interrelated
medical issues: student debt and the shortage of primary care physicians.
Third-year medical student Sameer Vohra spoke to Durbin about the problem and
later explained it to Cap City. “Most of us have debt in the upper $100,000 [range], and the national average is
almost $150,000,” he says. “That takes away a lot of opportunities for people who might be considering
medicine or they go after specialty that will pay more money in order to pay
off debt.” That leaves fewer doctors to provide preventative and basic healthcare to
communities, Vohra continues.
They asked Durbin to implement legislation similar to his John R. Justice
Prosecutors and Defenders Act, which offers law students $10,000 a year toward
loan debt if they sign on as prosecutors and public defenders for three-year
terms. Vohra says Durbin seemed intrigued by the idea, and after the meeting,
Durbin gave Cap City the skinny: “We should really devise a system to help defer or to forgive student debt if
these students will go into specialties where they’re needed and go into areas of our country where we have physician shortages.
That, to me, would be money well spent.”
This article appears in Nov 27 – Dec 3, 2008.
