From: utzoo!decvax!harpo!esquire!brl-bmd!wmartin
Newsgroups: net.followup
Title: Re: "re: Education as a right"
Article-I.D.: brl-bmd.415
Posted: Tue Nov  2 09:40:11 1982
Received: Wed Nov  3 06:51:41 1982
References: omsvax.187

Re repaying educational loans by work: This sounds great at first. The
idea of loaning (for example) $60,000 to a med student, and getting
back not $60,000 plus an artificially-low amount of interest, but, say,
$200,000 worth of services (at retail prices) sounds just wonderful.

But exactly how is the accounting to be handled, and how does the 
student loan fund get its money back? Consider this scenario:

Person "X" is loaned, over his/her student years, $60,000 to pay for 
a medical school education. In return, X agrees to what is essentially
two years of indentured servitude in medical service to a community
assigned by the governing bureaucracy. This sounds like what has
been described on the net. OK, so X is assigned to work in Sleepy
Hollow for two years. Let's assume that housing is provided, but we still
have to pay X enough for him/her (and a possible family) to eat and
clothe themselves over that two years -- say we pay them $20,000 per
year and the provided housing costs the government another $2,000 each 
year. So far, X has to do $244,000 worth of medical work (at retail cost)
to pay back not only the $200K loan repayment, plus the costs of support
during that time. So far, no problem -- those figures are not unrealistic
at current medical-care costs.

But how does this work get back to the student loan fund to provide more
cash for the next student waiting for a loan? Does the state where
Sleepy Hollow is have to pay the fund the $200K? If so, what incentive
is there to go with the bureaucratic route; why not just hire a private
physician with that money?  The people using the services of "X" are probably
not paying cash; they use public-provided health services because they
are on welfare or some form of assistance. There isn't $244,000 cash
coming IN from anywhere!

I am convinced that all this is just going to boil down to the government
paying out here, paying out there, etc. It pays for the loan, then it
pays for the support costs, then it pays for the medical care via Medicare,
and ALL the time it pays for the administering bureaucracy. In other words,
I am paying for it.

I am sure that the response from those advocating this will be that
the "social benefits" do the repayment. Even though tax and deficit
revenue is continually used to restore the loan fund, pay for the support
of the indentured physicians, and pay for the facilities and materiel
of the health care, and pay for the supervising bureaucracy, the
intangible benefits of getting a doctor to Sleepy Hollow are worth it
all. I doubt that.

If we decide that it is important to get doctors into small towns, or
any other skill into any location where there is not enough incentive
or reward to attract them normally, there is a simple solution; it still
requires some bureaucracy, but there is much less hypocrisy and
overhead -- draft them. Two years of assigned service in the "Medical
Service" or similar non-military organizations could be required of
everyone who doesn't enter the military. I had friends do such things
because they were CO's; it's nothing new. It could be a cost of citizenship.

With the economies involved in such mass service, the cost of support
could drop, and the continuity of services provided be improved. The
net result is the same, but it certainly seems simpler than trying to
trace benefits through a maze of governmental agencies at various
levels.

Will