4th year DO student here. I will likely owe 190-200k when all is said and done. Yeah, its gonna suck, but I lived pretty decently during my four years... you can do the military scholarship, its not bad... they give you a stipend every month (around 900 or so), get all yoru textbooks paid for, and tuition. If you do that all four years, you owe the military four years of service... and you cannot simply go to whatever residency you want, I think its more controlled by what the military wants you to go into... so its not like you can do an ortho residency at Harvard and THEN do your military service, I think the military gets you after you graduate med school. That's one option.
Another option is to do that national health scholarship thing. Its ok. I'm doing a rural rotation now and a few of the attendings are doing that. But you would either do FP/IM/Peds... nothing else.
I am applying for EM residencies now, and will be making 200-250k coming out. If you owe about 200k in loans, and want to pay it off in 10 years, you will pay about 2.5k off a month. However, if I'm making 11-12k a month salaried... that's a drop in the bucket.
