Lawmakers want to fix Central Valley’s doctor shortage. Would loan forgiveness help?
Members of Congress want to close the gap on the Central Valley’s doctor shortage with student loan forgiveness incentives.
California Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Rep. Josh Harder, D-Turlock, requested in a letter to the United States Department of Education on Monday that doctors in California working for nonprofit organizations qualify for its public service student loan forgiveness program.
The program, created by former President Barack Obama’s administration, offers student loan forgiveness to people working for nonprofit organizations across various fields, including medicine, if they have been on time with their loan payments for a decade.
But the program’s rules conflict with state laws in California and Texas that prevent doctors from being directly employed by most nonprofit hospitals, excluding many physicians from being considered.
California’s law prohibits doctors from being employed directly by private health care companies. The state law is intended to separate corporate interests from medical decisions. Doctors are hired as members of a hospital’s staff rather than by the organization itself. Only some rural hospitals are exempt from the rule.
Feinstein and Harder asked that the agency allow all doctors working in nonprofit hospitals and health care facilities to qualify, even if they are not employed by the organizations outright, to attract more physicians to low-income and rural communities that rely on those facilities, like the Central Valley.
“COVID has been a perfect example of why we need to get this done,” Harder said in an interview with The Modesto Bee on Tuesday. “If you had a heart attack or other emergency episode during the pandemic, you might not get the prompt quality care that you need because we don’t have enough doctors.”
The Central Valley currently has 157 doctors per 100,000 people while the Bay Area has 411 for the same number, according the figures released by California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office.
The change could bring about 10,000 new physicians to the Central Valley over the next decade, according to estimates by the California Medical Association, which endorses the senator and congressman’s bills that match the change requested in their letter. The association did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Feinstein and Harder introduced those bills — entitled “Stopping Doctor Shortages Act” and cosponsored by dozens of other members on both sides of the political aisle — in tandem to their respective chambers in 2020 and reintroduced them in 2021. The bills, which would make the same change that they are requesting the Education Department make in their letter, are still being reviewed.
A spokesperson for the Education Department, which is currently reviewing the program, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Even if the agency makes the change, the lawmakers want to pass the bill to make it harder for a future presidential administration that might be interested in ending the loan forgiveness program from retracting the law, Harder said.
The federal loan forgiveness update is one of several goals on the federal, state and local levels to attract more doctors to the Central Valley, including through backing initiatives to inspire Modesto students to practice medicine, building a new medical school at the University of California, Merced, and getting more residency programs in the area.
Harder hopes that the loan incentives install the final segment on a pipeline of doctors who are from the Central Valley to stay there, because “we need more doctors that are ‘culturally competent,’ that actually understand the Valley,” he said.
