¶ Intro / Opening
There was a shooting at UPMC Memorial Hospital . He basically held
¶ Shooting Incident at UPMC Memorial Hospital
an ICU hostage . A police officer who came to provide help was shot in the torso . Unfortunately he passed away .
The hospitals now have to kind of think about what they can do in order to mitigate these circumstances , before they turn into these ultimate tragedies . Because you put a lot of people at risk . I can't even imagine if someone came onto our floor and did that you come to the labor and delivery floor and do something like that .
I can't even imagine what the headlines would be . But again , if it's acceptable at schools taking out kindergartners , then why wouldn't it be acceptable at a labor and delivery floor , which is extremely sad .
All right , so next quick topic that we're going to talk about is another F around and find out time , so boom .
Who F'd around and found out . Y'all see that right there , folks .
Y'all see that . Y'all see that right there . Let me make my screen bigger . Y'all see that .
Right there , let me make my screen bigger . Y'all see that right there , folks . Y'all see that GOP may cut off student loan . Forgiveness for 4.8 million health care workers .
Now , folks , this we don't know if this is really going to play out , the way how people think this may play out out , the way how people think this may play out , but yo , if they're talking about this and the way in which folks in the federal government are losing their jobs right now , hey , yo , this might be coming .
So , basically , what they're saying , in order to make the budget , there's a bunch of budget cuts that they want to make , the GOP wants to make , and one of them is okay in order for us to save money in one place and be able to spend money in other places . Whatever it may be , we should consider making tax cuts .
Or we should make sure that maybe we get rid of the PSLF program , which is a big deal , right ? This is how the majority of folks , or majority of doctors who you know , finance their way through medical school . This is how they plan on paying it back . A majority of them , right ? They ?
say okay , well you know I'm going to graduate $300,000 , $400,000 a loan . But as soon as I start residency , you know I'm going to make those things , that the changes that I need to make and I'll jump into the PSLF .
I'll go through my three or four years of making my payments and then , when I become an attending , I'll make an additional seven years , right Cause you got to make 10 years of consecutive payments and not miss . And then I'll be out of student loan debt and I got to be at a nonprofit hospital .
So not only is PSLF possibly on the chopping block , but also they're talking about taking out the nonprofit status of all hospitals also .
So so , first of all , they don't even need to get rid of the . Pslf program . If they just say , listen , nonprofit status done , then that will automatically eliminate the PSLF program . Right , yes , so that's , I mean , that's there . Well , what is it from that that show Pearly Victorious ? There's more than one way to skin a cat .
Wait what show Were you talking about . Just like there's a lot of ways of wearing your hat , there's more than one way of skinning a cat .
There's more than one way to skin in a cat .
Pearly Victorious . I don't know what this is . Is this from when you was 13 ?
I don't know it's a play Old .
Black .
But anyway . So the government giveth and the government taketh away , just like Al Gore did I'm going to tell y'all right right now .
I don't know if this is gonna happen or not , but y'all see the swiftness at which people are losing their jobs . I would not be shocked if this , if this is gone , the thing that I and we you know even prior to this you know me and you it started . We paid off our debt , guys . We paid off what 662 000 of student loan debt in three years .
We paid off a variety of .
We paid it off for a variety of reasons , but the biggest one is we don't want to be in debt anymore . It made too many changes to our lifestyle . It almost literally didn't allow us to start having children for various reasons , but one of them is trying to afford IVF , look .
But when we paid off the debt , we went so hardcore at it and then , when PSLF became a thing , I was slowly thinking . I was like , hmm , could we have saved , could we have kept a lot more of our principal , a lot of that money that we went to pay off debt ?
Could we have , like , said , okay , we're going to do , pay our minimums that we have to , and then use the rest of the money to kind of just put towards other things , right , invest it in the stock market , get some more homes , do some very interesting things with that money , as opposed to take all of that cash and put it towards student loan debt .
It had me thinking . I don't know if you were thinking about it , but I was thinking about it .
I thought about it but I quickly said , yeah , it wouldn't have been for me .
And part of the reason that , for me , the PSLF program was you know , because we've been asked that before like , oh well , if you know , if you had known that PSLF was coming down the pike right , because it was very shortly after we paid off our debt that they were like hey , everybody , you know , you can get your student loans paid off if you have 10
years of X , y and Z , years of X , y and Z . But for me it was never going to be an option , because in order for me to have benefited from PSLF , that meant that I had to have been employed , and that is the price that you pay for getting , but we was employed though . We were employed for three years .
Correct right we were employed for three years , correct , right , we were employed for three years . That means that we would have had to have been um employed for at least for me , that was what that would have been residency , and then three years of employment would have been a total of seven years .
That means three more years I would have had to be employed . I didn't want to be employed at the point at which I decided to quit my job . That's why I quit I didn't want to be employed anymore , right ? So for me , you know , doing those three extra years would not have been worth it .
Was it three ? I think it was . Wait , what is it ? It was three we had to do , or ?
It would have been three more years . For me , for you , it would have been Keep going . Just so , everybody .
if you're watching on YouTube , I have a little graphic that says what is public service loan forgiveness ? To be eligible for PSLF right , this is to make sure that your loans get paid off completely . They get forgiven after 10 years . You got to be enrolled in a qualifying repayment plan . You have to have a qualifying federal student loan .
You have to work for a qualifying employer , which for the most part is a nonprofit hospital right . You have to submit the employment certification form you can find that on any of the student loan websites and you have to make 120 qualifying payments .
You cannot miss these payments and if you do that , you'll get your student loans forgiven , and for me it probably would have been more , because I deferred , deferred , deferred forbear , forbear , forbear missed payments , but you didn't know you was in a program . So what you're saying is it would have retroactively .
I don't know if it would have retroactively . No , it wouldn't have retroactively worked for me , actually . I right .
But if you had known that you was in this program , I think if , first of all , if you would have known that you were in this program or this program would have existed , you would have had a certain type of repayment plan . So the repayment plan is based off of how much you guys make , right ?
So let's say , for example , like you have $400,000 loans , you know , at the time you was , uh , how much were you making as a resident ? Like 40 , 50 , you know , or maybe like 50 , 60 .
Yeah .
You was in Jersey , the cost of living is higher . You know , rather than paying , like you know , I don't know whatever that would have been like 4,000, . You know , every month they bring it down to I don't know , like a G , two Gs , whatever it may be , maybe even less than that .
Then you do that for several years from residency and then it may change once you become an attending . Then you have to make consecutive payments . It might be worth it , but you don't think so .
I didn't want to be employed anymore . I did not like being employed . I just I didn't want to be employed anymore .
I did not like being employed . Like you know , people might sit there and be like we did three years of employment and then we said we didn't want to be employed anymore .
We didn't want to be employed anymore .
You can't do it . If you're low comes , you can't do it . Bps you don't qualify .
You know , for me , I just didn't want to be employed anymore .
Like . The mental burden of being employed was just . It was just too much for me , which is why Talk to us about that . Talk to us about that . What does that mean ? What do you mean by that ?
Um .
You know , I look you didn't like bringing charts home .
I didn't like bringing charts home Right . So when I was employed , I was full scope OB , which basically means that I was in the office . I was seeing patients in the office , doing procedures in the office , and then I was on call as well at the hospital delivering babies , doing emergency surgeries .
I was also in the hospital doing planned surgeries in the ER all those kinds of things Right , doing consults on the floor Right . And I just wanted to be able to do the things that I liked to do best . And for me , I liked being in the hospital .
I liked being able to choose my own schedule Right , because you could say , well , become a laborist , you know , or become a hospitalist .
A lot of people don't understand what that means . When you say be in a hospital , you mean be on call in the hospital . You don't like clinic In the hospital . Be clear you don't understand what that means . When you say be in a hospital , you mean be on call in the hospital . You don't like clinic . Be clear you don't like clinic .
Right . So I don't like clinic . I just didn't like . I just didn't like it . And so I wanted to be able to make those decisions on my own as to what my schedule was going to look like and what my day was going to look like . So you wanted to work when you wanted to work . You didn't want to have to work .
You didn't want to have to wait until the end of the month to find out . Yeah , I couldn't do that . Um , being employed , um , and you know , finding your name on a schedule on days that you're like damn , I really wanted this day off . Um , I just didn't . I just don't want to have to deal with that anymore . I just didn't .
Having to finagle and whatever .
I just didn't want to do that anymore .
I didn't like that anymore either , because there was a point I remember , when I finished fellowship and I started working locums . I was like , so what do you mean ? Just like when do I want to work ? I thought it was just like a schedule , and then I would work this schedule based off of what the hospital needed me to work , and then that was it .
I didn't know that like no , like you only work , you only work when you can work or when you want to work .
I was like wait what it took me several months to figure that
¶ Addressing Hospital Security Concerns
out , but when ?
so we did it for a year and a half where we were working on our own , and then we decided to okay , we're not going to do locums anymore , we're going to work , we're going to sign a contract , go to the hospital , we're going to be an employee . And it was a really big , rude awakening . I did not like it at all .
That was one of the biggest things of not controlling my schedule .
And then there was just some other things that I just didn't like and I felt like , once I signed on that on a dotted line , you know , I lost like the ability to make certain decisions , like clinically , that if I stayed as a locums I could be like well , just don't invite me to come back anymore .
Right , right , whereas I won't come back .
Right , because if you get fired as an employee , that's worse than just not being asked to come back as a locums , right , those are two separate things .
They just say we don't want you to come back , but you getting fired because maybe , like , you disagree with like hospital policy or you disagree with like you know , you're , um , the head of your department or something like that . Those are two separate things . And um , I just I get .
I guess , even going through residency and going through fellowship , I learned enough to know that I didn't like nobody telling me what to do and I just felt like , once I became an attending , I should be able to call the shots .
And I think I was just like it was too much smack in my face Like , yeah , you're never going to call the shots , you're never going to do this . It was like I felt like it was this and I was like , yeah , I don't like this , like get out of my face . You know I'm John Cena , you know like yo , get out of my face , like yo .
I was like , yeah , I don't like that , I don't like that , but I feel what you're saying . I feel what you're saying . But listen , elections have consequences , y'all Elections have consequences . And look , they got it . At this point right now , they got it .
I'm not saying I agree with it , I'm not saying that we shouldn't say anything , but I'm just saying , yeah , they got it . And this is a time over these next four years that y'all gonna have to just tighten the belts and just kind of pick out a way so that you not Go ahead .
I mean , here's my people always need to be on plan A and plan B , right ?
And if you think that something that you can't control is the thing that you're going to peg your life on , you need a plan B Because you cannot control the PSLF and we've talked about this on this show before , where we're like okay , well , pslf , you know it didn't exist when we were paying off our loans , but now it exists , which means but it was a
problem early on .
It was a problem early on because remember they said people would submit their papers and they weren't hearing anything back , and yes it took us like it was right around , like 2018 , 2019 , I think , when the real pslf people who really went through started rolling out yeah , yeah right , so it didn't exist before , but it exists .
It exists now , which means it cannot exist later on , right , like there's a possibility that it won't exist .
The alpha and the omega .
And the alpha and the omega . And you know me , I always say whenever you start something , you should always think about how that thing is going to end . We've talked about Tom Brady on this show before . Right . At some point he had to think about what his career was going to look like at the end , but it seemed like he never huh .
I don't think he did actually .
No , no , no , I said , but that's what I was going to say at some point . He had to , but it seemed like he didn't but he didn't want to it seems like he didn't . He didn't , he never thought about what retirement would look like , which is why he essentially lost .
Well , I can't say that's why , but he essentially lost his entire family right at the point at which he was supposed to retire , right , and so it's like , well , what does this look like for you ?
And so that's what I would implore every single person listening to this show , doctor or not , that you need to think about what something is going to look like if it ends , if you are in something and that thing ends , what is it going to look like for you ? And to have a plan B . You know , have a plan B , now I get it .
There are things in life that you just you can't plan for , or you know they just happen . So suddenly I get it . But there are a lot of things that you actually can plan for .
Yeah , I think the things that you can't , the things that you are handing over control for , you have to figure out like how can I make sure that that , if I , if this thing that I can't control completely takes over my life , what do I do to get out of it right ? And student loans has the potential to take over someone's life right or take over .
You know their , you know the economics and so forth so their resources like I think that , listen y'all , like y'all may have to start considering , like , what it's going to be like to put some stash away . You know , put a stash away so that you can save money , so that you can make some student large student loan payments that may be on the table .
I mean this goes for a lot of things I saw that's something that I'm concerned , I'm really concerned about , is just like that notion . The other thing is what will it do to ? Will it affect admissions ? You know , will it affect specialty .
you know rates of people going into specialties Right when you know that people a lot of times they'll choose a certain specialty or they choose specialties that have a higher amount of pay just because it helped them get out of student loans quicker or helped them have a perceived lifestyle .
I mean , yeah , exactly , Just for the lifestyle factor . But again , like I mean , like I said , it goes for all kinds of things . That's why we always talk about disability insurance , that's why we always talk about life insurance on this show . We talk about all of these things .
Right , All these things , all of these things have a common thread and that is something that you can control , right , In terms of the , the . You know the impact of that thing .
Right , you can control , like , what happens , at least financially , or at least you know in some sort of lifestyle way , some sort of plan you can make a plan for that thing doesn't pan out Today was Go ahead . Well , I'll say quickly , I know we probably weren't going to get on this subject at all , but speaking of , you know , pop culture .
So today or yesterday actually , I found out about , you know , joanne Reed being let go from MSNBC . And if you know anything about me , I had said two years ago I was like they're going to get rid of Joanne Reed . And today I was talking or texting with a friend of mine and I was like I feel like people are shocked .
I feel like people are just shocked that this happened , and particularly her . I felt like , just , she had a clip on I forget what show she was on , but she had a clip that played on Instagram and you know , obviously she was very upset um about you know , having lost that spot on um on MSNBC . And I was like should we be leaving on a high note ?
Should we be taking control of our own lives ? Should we be realizing that a platform that isn't yours and built for you , ie a program , pslf that isn't necessarily , you know , built for you specifically , you don't control it . Should you be planning a plan B ? I think the answer is yes .
In our example . There's plenty of examples of people just like you know not staying on network TV and going to YouTube and creating their own , you know , tv shows and so forth , I think we get the point .