Student loan caps might worsen national doctor shortage

WASHINGTON The tax and spending law includes provisions that significantly alter the student loan process for higher education. The law halts current student loan repayment plans for loans that are granted on or after July 1, 2026. On that date, the law also terminates Grad PLUS loans

- Shalina Chatlani, Tribune News Service

Twenty-eight-year-old Michaela Bonner has been working 12-hour shifts as an emergency medical technician in Norfolk, Virginia, for the past four years, while attending and paying for college to finish her prerequisites for medical school.

But now that President Donald Trump's signature tax and spending law bars students from borrowing more than $50,000 annually in unsubsidised federal loans for medical school, Bonner is worried her dream of becoming a doctor is financially out of reach. “I get told, ‘Well, we really need you. We have a physician shortage, and you've done all this work leading up to this point,’ and that's true as well, and it’s not that I want to quit,” Bonner said in a recent interview. “But there are no systems in place that I can rely on to support me now that I can't take out the full cost of living through loans.”

The tax and spending law includes provisions that significantly alter the student loan process for higher education. The law halts current student loan repayment plans for loans that are granted on or after July 1, 2026. On that date, the law also terminates Grad PLUS loans, which have helped people pay for their higher education degrees and total cost of attendance. Current borrowers will be grandfathered in. The federal law gives current borrowers enrolled in loan repayment plans for students based on income — such as those plans known as SAVE or IBR — until July 1, 2028, to switch to a new plan. Interest collection will resume Aug. I for students enrolled in the Biden-era SAVE plan.