More on the money

So, rather than letting me be 5K richer, the Financial Aid department decided I would be better if they just took the scholarship and applied it to the G.R.A.D Plus loan (GRAD PLUS stands for Government Rape And Defrauding of Professional, Law, and Uther Students since the loan is at an astronomical 8% interest, which is not deferred to graduation). This is both good and bad. Good because I don't have 5K of a high interest loan, but bad because it doesn't increase the net amount of money at my disposal. I wish they had let me keep some of the loan money because the amount budgeted to each student is only barely enough for even a small family such as mine. Oddly the health insurance is one of the most costly expenses we have. You would think that a medical school would understand the need for affordable insurance more than anyone else, but no. Everyone who has more than just themselves living on the financial aid disbursement has to take out more loans to pay the insurance. The coverage is phenomenal, but expensive. All of my friends are on WIC, food stamps, and those with several children are on Medicaid. Yet, for all this, some people claim that medical students are entitled and don't understand poverty.
One of the guest lecturers in our interdisciplinary health issues class made that very claim. She was a guest lecturer from Washington DC. She also said that few, if any of us, had worked to get into our seats, nor did we really deserve them. Are there a few entitled jerks in my class for whom daddy is paying their way? maybe a few, but I don't know any. I don't know how she had the gall to make her claim, since something like 65% of medical school applicants don't get in. If we got in, isn't it implicit that the admissions committee thought we deserved it? I was also enraged by her claim that we didn't understand poverty. The single students live at 161% of federal poverty, married but no kids 120%, 1 kid at about 100%, two kids at 79%, and the one guy in our class with 4 teenagers lives at 61%. These numbers are based on our maximum financial aid disbursement as a fraction of the federal poverty line for a family of the described size as indicated by the Department of Health and Human Services. Yup, that guy whose family survived medical school for 4 years on Medicaid sure doesn't know what it's like. I hope that we don't forget the years that we spent eking out a living when it comes time to treat Medicaid patients or the uninsured. Who knows what the "system" we have in place will be like in 7-10 years when we all start practicing.