The typical physician completes medical school with high hopes and lots of student loans to repay–$90,745 worth, on average, at a time when managed care is squeezing doctors’ earnings. So many graduates do the obvious thing: grab the best-paying position they can find to get a good start on reducing that burden. But doctors who want to combine idealism with financial prudence have another option: getting paid extra to accept tough assignments in poor areas where doctors are scarce.
That’s the deal offered by a federal program that dates back to 1989. Physicians, dentists, and other health professionals sign up to spend two years working at health clinics for the poor in underserved areas of rural and urban America. The clinics pay them much less than they might make in private practice, but the government pays them a bonus of $50,000.
It’s been a good deal for these communities and a good deal for doctors–but not anymore. You see, this year, at least 700 of these health care providers won’t get their bonuses. In response to congressional funding cuts, reports The New York Times, the Department of Health and Human Services has elected to eliminate the payments.
So doctors and dentists who passed on lucrative offers, packed up their families and headed to where they were needed have suddenly discovered they’ve been swindled. And as if it weren’t bad enough to renege on its end of the deal, the government didn’t even bother letting most of them know that the money wouldn’t be coming.
This is terrible news for those who took the government up on its offer and now are left just as deeply in debt as ever. It’s also a nightmare for clinics serving poor areas, which badly need the federal bonuses to attract and retain staffers. Already, many of these providers are looking for better-paying jobs elsewhere.
It’s hard to imagine that many people in Congress or the Clinton administration would want to defend a policy that involves deceiving medical professionals and short-changing underserved communities. Both branches need to act promptly to reverse it.
