I just ran across this forum as well. A little about myself:
Parris Island, 3046, L Co
School of Infantry,
3d Bn 5th Marines
- TF Wildfire
- 31st MEU (2002)
- Iraq, OIF I (Jan - May 2003)
1st Bn 1st Marines
- Iraq, OIF 3-7, with another deployment on the horizon.
My family and I are at a major crossroads in our lives. I've decided that I would like to pursue medicine. My wife is a bit apprehensive, as I am the sole provider. We have a baby on the way. My EAS is in June of 2009 and I will be 29 years old. At that point, I will probably have to do some post-bac studies to boost my GPA as well as help out on the MCAT. Some of my peers think I'm crazy as I have "missed my window" and I am "too old" but I tend to believe if there is the will, you can take the hill. My only concern is, I plan on going through the military (Navy) to get my M.D. and will most likely go until retirement, however, I'm trying to wargame how to provide a living, tackle school, and keep my family insured medically for those post-bac semesters. Any takers?
I apologize if these questions are answered in another thread or forum. I am still researching. I tell my wife that there are plenty of grants, scholarships and loans for us military types, especially OIF veterans. A penny for your thoughts.
DISCLAIMER: I am not busting down on Navy Medicine and I applaud and support anybody who wants to serve our country and our Marines as a Navy physician...OK?
If you're just looking at the HPSP because you think you can't afford medical school and being poor for four years, don't do it. First of all, even though the Navy will pay for your tuition and you'll avoid that debt, unless you plan on a career in Family Medicine or Pediatrics you will come out way ahead in the end because, and I have run the numbers, your real compensation as a residency trained physician in the Navy in a typical specialty (counting your BAS and VHA or whatever they call it now) with all of the incentive and special pay will still only be in the upper $90,000. Hospitalists (internal medicine) start after residency in the 160s to 180s. Emergency Physicians after only a three-year residency start in the low 200s.
You will owe five years
post-residency and you run the risk of being asigned as a GMO after you graduate medical school where you wil end up being sent to the fleet as Battalion Surgeon without any additional training at all. In other words, you may have to defer residency training for the majority of your contractually obligated service. You will have no problem getting a civilian residency once you get out, you understand, but you will not get any of the specialty pay when you are a GMO.
And you will still be poor in medical school because the stipend is only $1300 per month and this may come out of the money you can borrow above the cost of attendance for living expenses. In other words, I was able to borrow about $19,000 a year extra for living expenses. You won't be able to borrow any additional because the financial aid office may look at your stipend as your living expenses after which none is required.
The point of medical school with a spouse and a family (I have four kid, three when I was in medical school) is to just get by. The extra 60K you'll borrow for living expenses, in the long run, is chump change and just the cost of being a doctor, especially if you match into a lucrative specialty. In other words, don't fear the debt. I consolidated most of mine at a ridiculously low interest rate and once I am an attending, paying it back won't be too much of a burden. (If you gross $20,000 a month, what's $1000?).
The Navy will pay you more if you get a Navy residency, which is an advantage, but like I said, in the long run, say after ten years, you will be way ahead in private practice if you just suck it up a little now. No question you will have to suck it up. We are sucking big time right now and just barely keeping the wolves from the door but in two years we will be free and clear with no obligation to anybody and free to look for the best offer possible.
If you want to Go Navy, I say eschew the HPSP, suck it up and borrow money for medical school like everybody else, and then, if after four years you are still hot for it (which you may not be) do the Financial Assistance Program) where you match into a civilian residency, owe no miltary obligation for the length of your trainig, will get a stipend that will double your residency salary (about $40K a year from the Navy added to your $40K from residency) and, most importantly, you only will owe service for the length of time you accepted the stipend plus one year. If you matched into Family Medicine, for example, which is a three year residency, you will only owe four years.
At this stage, you don't know jack about medicine, what you want to do, and what you will like. I see you have deployed quite a few times and no doubt your lovely and long-suffering wife is sick of it. She may not be so keen to have you deploying all of the time five or six years from now when you are a brand new GMO assigned to the MEU and she has gotten used to having you at home all the time.
Bottom line: Don't panic and shoot your bolt. The debt is nothing to be afraid of. (It's the struggle through residency that will suck.)
! Please be sure to let me know where you end up, man. 
