That person is just a panda wannabe. Going around saying that debt is not an issue. What a ****ing idiot.
Did you not read one of my previous posts? Medical student debt for most medical students including those who match into primary care is not that hard to manage. It looks like a lot now, that $150,000-or-so of debt, but that's only because you've never made any real money or worked at a decent job. In other words, it only looks like a lot for the same reason you think a $102,000 salary is a crapload of money, namely because you have no basis for comparison except the usual entry level jobs that you may have held.
I also again want to caution all of you to not make physician pay a function of medical student debt. To do so is to set yourself up to make diddly-squat when the government under The Sun King, Ra-Obama, calls your bluff and offers to pay for medical school provided you work for peanuts.
Now look, I am down to the double digits in days left of this long, slow slog through medical training. I have applied to medical school, interviewed, written a cheesy personal statement, stretched the truth a bit on my application, matriculated, cut up cadavers, sat in lecture, walked around like a jibbering ****** on my first day of clinical rotations, and eventually graduated. I went through the match twice, did two grueling intern years during which I was almost always severely sleep deprived, and am
this close to completing my residency. I have rotated in everything, put up with abuse and humiliation, and learned a lot about medicine from a practical, theoretical, financial, legal, and philosophical perspective. I have passed all three Step exams, have a real honest-to-God medical license, an NPI number, a CDS license, and a DEA number. I have interviewed for real jobs, negotiated contracts, turned some people down and signed the one I thought was the best deal for me in terms of pay, location, and work environment. I have sweated and bled for this career over the last eight years and sacrificed almost everything that should be important and now I come back with tales from the strange land of medicine, a land that many of you have never seen and can only imagine, and instead of saying, "Thanks for taking the time to let us know what lies ahead all you can say is 'What a ****ing idiot.'"
My reasons for writing my blog and posting here on SDN are my own. But while you need to be skeptical of everything everybody tells you, to reject out-of-hand everything that doesn't jibe with your preconcieved notions is ridiculous.