K after reading all of this I just want to make a small clarification for someone.
Both MD and DO schools are *prohibited* from paying for clerkships directly by the rules of their accreditation. The rules of the LCME are more restrictive, the rules of COCA are more permissive, but in the "big picture" they're both equally prohibited in an absolute sense.
The reality is that about a 1/4 of MD schools pay $0.00 per student to their clerkships. And around 1/8 of DO schools pay $0.00. The remainder make their payments under the guise of "academic kickbacks" and "student education investment". Basically its small sums of money that is highly tied up so that it cannot be construed as a "payment" but rather as compensation for any direct costs (NOT EDUCATION OR TIME LOST) by the student, or simply to fund education.
This varies immensely from caribbean schools which give >5x the maximum of any american school and give the money carte blanche for anything the hospital may wish to do.
The majority of the money you pay for tuition your 3rd and 4th year goes towards your malpractice insurance and subsidizing the costs of the first 2 years, where its not unusual to be running in the red from the budget of those two years alone.
source: I am a primary source on this matter.