Most long-term readers know I spent my first four years out of residency as a military physician. I was an Air Force officer (separated as a major), but worked shifts in both Air Force and Navy Hospitals (the Navy was much more impressed when I introduced myself as “Captain Dahle”). I took care of soldiers, airmen, sailors, and marines. I even took care of SEALs, although their descriptions of just how they got injured were always extremely vague. I practiced medicine on four continents, ran a hospital department, served on the medical executive committee, functioned as the EMS director, could direct the assembly of a tent hospital in a matter of hours, and at times knew the most about my specialty and several others (ophtho, ENT) of any military members in an entire country. Those who have read what I have written about military medicine might conclude that I am the most anti-military doctor on the planet. That is not true at all. When I am asked for my honest opinion, I tell people that the bad just barely outweighed the good such that I would not do it again, but that I had lots of great experiences and nothing really bad that could have happened to me ever actually happened.
They even let you keep the uniform when you get out
I managed to skate through all but one of the bad things that can occur in military medicine. Nobody ever took a shot at me. I managed to get exactly what I wanted out of the military match (and the civilian match.) My deployments were shorter and safer than those of any other military emergency doctor I know. One of my two kids even knew who I was when I came home. I put up with my share of bureaucratic nonsense and came home a lot more often complaining about my job than I do now, but the only really bad thing that ever happened to me was my assignment. When I came out of residency, I was told to make a rank list of the 16 or so places that the Air Force sent emergency docs. My wife and I stewed over it like a residency rank list and after much blood, sweat, and tears submitted it. Then we were given our last choice. It kind of made us wonder why we bothered making the list since it obviously had no effect on our assignment. At the last minute, we were offered a new assignment, one where there wasn't even an emergency doc and so it wasn't on our list at all. Given the alternative, it seemed like a good idea to take it (which we did in about 10 seconds as my wife yelled “Take it! Take it!” while I was covering the mouthpiece on the phone.) We ended up a long way from family and even further from the mountains. Oh well. I took up disc golf and gave up climbing for a while (which serendipitously allowed me to replace a very expensive term life insurance policy.)
The military and its HPSP “Scholarship” has its problems, but in today's post, I'd like to point out some really awesome things about military medicine.
The Benefits of Being a Military Doctor
# 1 Quality of the People I Served With
The best part of the military was the people, without a doubt. I served with my co-workers and I served with my patients. The vast majority of the people I worked with and the people I worked on had made a commitment to serve their country and each other and were absolutely a pleasure to be around. They were truly the salt of the earth. Now, I'm in a great partnership and have some great co-workers. I even have some great patients. But imagine an ER where all the patients are required to maintain a healthy weight, work out three times a week, work hard for a living, and get drug-screened regularly. It's pretty cool. Except for the fact that they don't actually get non-viral illnesses very often, which makes the medicine itself a little boring.
# 2 Camaraderie
In the military, it not only feels like it is you against our nation's enemies, it feels like it is you against “the man.” It isn't that any of our commanders, right up to the commander in chief, really wanted anything bad for us, it was simply that the needs of the military did not always coincide with our personal and career desires. But that opposition really makes for a great sense of camaraderie, like we're all in this together. You have a little bit of that in residency, but precious little of it in a community hospital.
# 3 No Uninsured
Did I mention that everyone you see has insurance? While wait times are sometimes longer than you would like (the naval hospital I worked at scheduled MRIs 24/7, even at 2 or 3 in the morning every night of the week), nobody has to pass on needed care due to a lack of ability to pay for it. I don't think I saw a dental pain patient in four years. Amazing!
# 4 Everyone Has Someone
Likewise, everybody has someone assigned to take care of them. Some patients in a civilian emergency department have literally no one they can call to come get them and take care of them. But everybody in the military has a first sergeant and a commander. They may not want me to call them, but I can! No sitting around waiting to sober up in my ED.
# 5 Get to See the Price of Meds
The military electronic medical record had its issues, without doubt. But it also had a really cool feature. When you put a prescription into it, it would tell you how much the medication cost the military on a per pill basis. Most pills were less than 10 cents and a dollar a pill was a really high price. It would be pretty awesome to have that kind of transparency in our civilian system, not to mention those prices!
# 6 Security
One of the worst parts about practicing emergency medicine is you fear for your physical safety. Just about anyone can get into our “weapons-free” ED with a gun and wipe out the whole place because they're mad they didn't get a dozen percocets. So what does the hospital do? It gives you an unarmed “guard,” (who may very well qualify for Social Security benefits,) to keep the place secure. The response time for the police ranges between 3 and 4 minutes (ask me how I know.) Well, in the military I NEVER feared a patient would hurt me. Not only did they have to get past a guard armed with an M-16 to get to me, but if they started acting up (or ran off when they weren't supposed to) I could call an entire company of heavily armed military policemen to ensure compliance with my treatment plan. Those guys loved nothing better than to run down an escapee. There was no way a patient I didn't want to leave the ED was going to make it off base. That was the most fun Security Forces had all week.
# 7 Guaranteed Debt-Free Date
Let's move into some of the more financial topics related to military service. I keep running into these docs who are planning to pay off their student loans over 5, 7, 10, or even 15 years. Well, my “student loans” were paid off in four years, guaranteed. Not a day less, but not a day more either. If you can't get rid of your student loans within 4 years while living a “military doctor lifestyle,” maybe you should take a closer look at serving.
# 8 Gradually Increasing Income
I criss-cross this country preaching to students, residents, and attendings the merits of living like a resident and growing into your income as slowly as you can. But I confess that I had an advantage that many of of them will never have. I was FORCED to grow gradually into my attending income. In the 14 years since I started getting a paycheck as a resident, my income has gone up every single year. Now we've always saved, and as an attending always saved a lot, but it's a little easier not to spend $300K as a brand-new attending when you're getting paid $120K as a brand-new attending. I sometimes wonder how much of our financial success I can attribute to the fact that we had many small raises instead of one big one like most emergency docs.
# 9 The TSP and the SDP
Military members have two really cool investment programs available to them. The first is the Thrift Savings Plan, which is basically the lowest cost 401(k) program in the country. It is comprised entirely of high-quality index funds with rock-bottom expense ratios. It even has a unique investment, the G Fund, not available anywhere else which provides one of the few “free lunches” in investing- bond yields with money market stability. The TSP is so good, I've kept it since separating and actually roll more money into it when I get a chance. It's even better now that it has a Roth option. The second really cool program is the “Savings Deposit Program.” When you deploy and for three months afterward, you can put up to $10K total into this account and earn a guaranteed annualized 10% on it. I wish I could find more guaranteed 10% returns out there. [Note: The The Department of Defense’s (DoD) new retirement system, known as the Blended Retirement System (BRS), took effect on January 1, 2018. Click here for a description of the new program.]
# 10 Allowances
The best financial advantage for military members is the fact that a large chunk of their pay is tax-free in the form of a Basic Allowance for Subsistence (BAS) and more importantly, a Basic Allowance for Housing (BAH.) In addition, many of the “special doctors pays” don't require the payment of payroll taxes. While deployed, a big chunk of your basic pay is also completely income tax-free. But wait, there's more. While in the military, you can usually declare your state of residency as one of the 7 states without an income tax, or at least one that doesn't tax your military paychecks. All this adds up to a ridiculously low effective tax rate on your income. In fact, one year in which I was deployed for the last 4 months of the year, I had an effective tax rate (federal, state, and payroll) of under 5% on a six figure income. I won't see that again in my lifetime.
There you have it, the top ten things I loved about being a military doctor.
What do you think? Have you served or are you currently serving in the military? What do you love about it? Would you do it again? Comment below!
The post 9/11 GI bill. Transferred to your children and used well, this can be incredibly valuable.
Didn’t use it for kid one who went to state tuition free (saved it for kid two, or law school) but it might save us as much as $300,000 (probably only $160,000 though) at a private college if I understand this yellow ribbon business correctly. If kid two goes to state free we may save it for graduate school for one of them, or go back ourselves.
used mine with yellow ribbon for my oldest – wound up saving around $220K total over undergrad and grad school at a big name private university from 2010-2014, with a little left over to help with her first semester of grad school.
So your $160K may be a little bit of a low-ball estimate.
Agreed, but not something I got so it didn’t go on the list.
#11: Get to do “cool guy” stuff like deep sea diving, jump out of helicopters, mountain/cold weather medicine course all while getting paid.
#12: Use the GI Bill
#13: Appreciate and get appreciated on November 11 each year
# 11 – Wish there would have been some of this in my career. I was very disappointed how little of this there was. For instance, I think I shot a grand total of 90 rounds while in the military and did a lot less “cool guy stuff” because I lived someplace where it was hard to do while active duty.
#3 is why I am considering the military post graduation. It has now become a thing where patients are only seen in network where it used to be doctors would see patients for the sake of healing. I am gonna go ahead and say the large student loan burden has changed people attitude towards this.
Not sure what you’re saying here. Do you think Tricare doesn’t have network and non-network providers, or that military treatment facilities pick and choose what class of patient they are going to see (active, dependent, retiree)? And while everyone is insured, this creates a significant moral hazard whereby care is over utilized because there is no skin in the game.
I completely agree with ENT Doc’s comment! As a current Air Force family medicine physician, I see other providers order MRIs like CRAZY, even when not necessarily warranted. Further, patients have some real compliance issues with their medication regimens. And why wouldn’t they? Their meds are FREE so there is less patient buy-in. Everyone who separates or retires these days refuse to go before getting a sleep study- you can get paid big bucks for the rest of your life for sleep apnea- even if it is due to being overweight and your fault. Most family medicine docs in the Air Force are completely frustrated. There are some great aspects as listed above; the maternity leave and convalescent leave policies are amazing, the camaraderie is great, the financial stability is so helpful! But, just when you get used to your job, they move you against your will to North Dakota…
Re patients all have insurance: I like to quip that I’ve worked for the two largest HMOs (older term) or socialized medicine systems in the world: the US military and the British NHS. I didn’t get comfortable enough in the NHS to know/see if this is true for it (I suspect not, and their psych and dental care sucks almost as badly as it does in the US for the uninsured, and I doubt the Canadian system can be as good as US Army if they have only a fraction of the MRI machines the US does), but in the US Army if I referred a patient for a consult or test and then was told “the wait time is 2 years” I could call up the department and discuss the patient with an RN or the doc and either they would agree with me the patient could not wait, or teach me why they could wait or why the consult was not needed. Case in point: child with burns tethering his chin toward chest, shortening with healing. 2 year wait for plastic surgery they warned me when we faxed over referral. Phone call: 2 weeks for appointment in 3 minutes conversation. Now, if I wanted a facelift or cosmetic boob job I’d’ve had to wait until the plastic surgeon wanted to practice that procedure prior to heading out into private practice (and pull a few strings to jump ahead of all the other folk hoping for the same).
I’m still on the med student side of military medicine, so I can’t really comment about life as a military doc quite yet… But one financial benefit that has been awesome so far is the 20K signing bonus that I received before starting med school. I finished undergrad with no debt, so I was able to fully invest the signing bonus in the market and have seen some nice growth already. So I would say one advantage is that I get to see a little bit of the time value of money work for me whereas the rest of my classmates won’t get any of that benefit.
I didn’t get that $20K signing bonus. They didn’t have to offer it before 9/11 to get people to sign-up apparently!
Lowes now offers a 10% discount to everyone who has served in the military. This, along with other military discounts have saved my family thousands over the last six years of med school and residency.
Heavily discounted tickets to Disneyland!
Discounted admission to movies, museums, zoos, etc.
While you are in the Reserves, including HPSP, the commissary can be a great deal if you live near one. The base exchanges are usually not so great, but often you can get a price match if Amazon or Wal-Mart has a better price and then take advantage of the tax-free purchase.
What have you bought at home depot as a student/resident that 10% saved you thousands? I mean, by definition that means you spent at least $20K at Lowe’s. That’s a lot of money at that stage of life.
I found the commissary/BX to be hit and miss. Sometimes stuff was cheaper, sometimes it was more expensive. Really seemed random.
I had an income from odd jobs and VA disability in addition to my wife’s HPSP stipend, so our standard of living could afford to be a bit higher than a household living solely off the stipend/residency pay. We’ve owned a home in med school and residency, so over the years we’ve bought water heaters, fridges, washer and dryer, new roof, and a number of home improvements. I buy good quality power tools and do most of the work on my own.
The Hampton Roads grocery chain Farm Fresh also gave a military discount of 10% on all store brand products, which I mentally added into that figure. Living in Norfolk just about every other store and restaurant had a military discount.
Yea, but it’s not worth sitting in tunnel traffic. 🙂
I don’t miss the tunnels at all. Luckily, my wife only had to go through one during her two or three rotations in Portsmouth. Tunnels and highways played a major role in picking out where we bought a house. Now I live a quarter mile from the hospital and get anywhere in town within 15 minutes.
Thank you for serving and thank you for everyone else who is out there serving. We take for granted how fortunate and relatively safe we are in this country. That is due to people serving in our militaries. So thank you.
US Army in the 70s. Agree with everything WCI said, and more. I had to live off post due to housing shortage. Driving in one morning (to BAMC at Fort Sam) a kid in a convertible was playing games – cutting me off, slowing down, etc – really annoying. I was mumbling as I entered the hospital. The NCOIC that morning asked me what was wrong…..and I told him. He asked for the license number and I started to give it to him, then asked why he wanted it. He said that in Texas, with a LP #, you can get a home address, and he would send a couple of the “boys” to his house for an “attitude re-adjustment session.” I demurred, not because of the tune-up, but I didn’t want any of my guys getting in trouble. Taught anesthesia residents for my two years of Berry Plan service. Enjoyed it immensely. However, the $15,000 annual salary left us just above the food stamp threshold.
Good rundown of the positives of serving as a military physician Jim, is the next post about the negatives? I share your ambivalence about my HPSP schollie & 8 years of Army active duty. Fifteen years later it’s still hard to give a simple answer when young people ask if they should do it.
I don’t have another post on the subject planned. I do have an article already published about whether one should use the military or not to pay for med school which discusses positives and negatives.
My comment was tongue in cheek (even though it doesn’t read that way). That kind of article would be a downer.
One of the comments (# 16) pretty much already wrote the “negative” post anyway.
Hello! Great article!
I am considering becoming a military physician and I was wondering if you would be willing to have a conversation over email?
Thank you!
Read this:
https://www.whitecoatinvestor.com/personal-finance/should-i-join-the-military-to-pay-for-medical-school/
and this:
https://www.whitecoatinvestor.com/the-health-professions-scholarship-program-hpsp-scholarship/
If you still have questions, feel free to email me. But recognize I’ve been out of the military for a decade now and it has been 21 years since I commissioned. Things change.
Great article from a military doctor. I always wondered about their perspective.
#14. May inspire child to apply to service academy. Scholarship valued at $400k which can then be invisted towards FIRE.
#11 – living cool places. It is very difficult to live and work in Germany as a US med school grad unless you happen to be in the US military. You get a non-taxed “Cost of Living Allowance” while overseas, so your pay doesn’t suffer. If you live in Europe, every weekend/holiday is a European vacation. So 3 amazing years there – hard to put a price tag on.
Also was “stationed” in San Francisco for Army Sponsored fellowship at UCSF, and lived on the Presidio (the Park Service would rent out the prior military housing to current servicemembers stationed in SF for whatever your Housing Allowance was!!!) and am currently ending my career here in Hawaii (another place that people actually pay good money to visit.) Which leads to…
#12 – Retirement. This gets short shrift by people, but is worthy of talking about. One of the last great “defined benefit plans”. For typical retirement ranks of a doc, it is worth about $56K/year at 20 years up to about $98K/year at 30 years. (2.5% of “Base Pay/year after 20, and the “Base Pay” number keeps going up every 2-4 years you stay in service). It begins immediately (often age 46 for an HPSP doc hitting 20 years service – and yes your military residency counts as years towards your 20 years of service. So my 6 year residency and 1 year fellowship are a huge chunk of my “service” time.) Inflation adjusted annually. Not sure what a SPIA that guaranteed $98K/year for the rest of my life starting age 56 would cost, but I value this at more than $2.5 million. Comes with ability to have or purchase very cheap health insurance which has problems but is still an amazing value. Which leads to…
#13 – Early Retiree Health Insurance. Tricare is painful, but very affordable and is a great bridge from military retirement to Medicare years. When you look at reasons people keep going to work when they could otherwise quit, health insurance is often mentioned. So that’s something.
Thanks for the great post Jim. As you always say – The military is not “worth it” if you only join for the money – but you have listed some awesome reasons that make it appealing to some of us.
The problem with getting posted overseas is it is reserved for those willing to sign-up for another tour. Nearly impossible to get if you only stay in for your initial commitment. That was one of the reasons I signed up but really felt hosed about.
The retirement pension is a great benefit, but not one I got after only 4 years on active duty. Same with the health insurance.
Thank you for that summary! I don’t know a lot of military docs, so it’s good to get some perspectives from an angle I know nothing about.
Let me apologize in advance for a noob question. How is it possible to roll money into the TSP if you are no longer an employee? I would be interested in seeing a post on this or even if you can point me in the direction of a reference. I have a TSP account from when I worked as a staff at a VA during fellowship. My current 401k options are not terrible (as far as a 401k goes), but are also not TSP level expense ratios. I did not think it was possible to escape this but if there is a way I would love to hear it. Thanks in advance for any advice.
Not sure it’s complicated enough to justify a post. Basically, fill out this form and send it to the TSP:
https://www.tsp.gov/PDF/formspubs/tsp-60.pdf
But bear in mind your 401(k) has to allow in-service rollovers, and most don’t let you do that until you separate.
My dad is EM and retired Navy. He went the military route because otherwise he wouldn’t have been able to go to college. He owed 8 years (undergrad + med school) so by the time he was done with residency plus the 8 years he figured he may as well do all 20. He actually stayed a few years past the 20 and discovered he had a lot of leverage at that point (you want to send me somewhere I don’t want to go? I’ll put in my retirement papers tomorrow!)
His advice to me was to only do military if it was something I was passionate about. Said if I lived like a resident for 4 years after and got my loans paid off, financially you don’t come out *that* much differently. I did not do military, paid my loans off within 3 years, plus I’m living and working exactly where I want to be. I think that advice stands- if you want to be in the military, join the military. Don’t do it just to avoid having loans.
I agree.
My wife forwarded me this article, and I feel obliged to respond.
Unfortunately I have not had the same great experiences in the military and my commitment is long (AF academy + HPSP). Financially speaking I knew it was a raw deal early in my military career while still at USAFA, but I was already stuck in a “contract.” I reluctantly took the HPSP scholarship because I did not want to wait 5 years to go to medical school (USAFA commitment is 5 years) which meant I incurred another 4-year consecutive commitment to the Air Force for a total of 9 years. I even turned down my interview to USUHS (military medical school) which is where I always saw myself going because I was afraid to add another 3 years to my commitment! During my years in medical school I made a point to return to the AF academy and brief all pre-med students about the financial implications of military medicine and the difference between USUHS and HPSP. My main point of discussion was that most USAFA grads would attend USUHS almost by default, sometimes nearly 90% of the premed class. I went through the numbers with them to explain how much money they could potentially lose, even if staying in the military, by delaying their re-enlistment bonuses another 3 years.
I did well in medical school but applied to the only three available programs for active duty residency with a total of 7 positions. I avoided the civilian match and only applied military because I at least wanted my time in residency to count as time in service, and I would not take a sponsored residency because that also incurs additional consecutive years of commitment. I was tasked with a PGY1 general surgery year. During that year I applied EM and matched in my #1 program, only to be withdrawn from residency selection to fill a “critical shortage” of flight medicine positions. Two GMO years later I reapplied to the match only to be told I would deploy to Afghanistan rather than go to my #1 program that I had been selected to attend (again!). I eventually went to residency. Now I will say that thanks to the AF’s partnerships with civilian programs I received exceptional EM training at a very busy civilian trauma/tertiary care center. I was also able to purchase a home thanks to my higher than average resident salary. By the time I graduated residency, however, I was a PGY6. Most of my classmates from medical school were already well into their EM careers, and some who chose less competitive specialties for the match were almost done with the 4-year HPSP contract.
As an attending AF EM physician I work an about 160-180 hrs per month, which is 1.5 times more than the average EM physician. Last year after taxes my salary was 118K. This means I collected about $54 an hour, which is less than most plumbers I have hired to unclog my toilet. The opportunity costs associated with my military educational commitment leads to even more dramatic numbers.
3 years of residency graduation delay thanks to the AF means 3 years of lost potential income. Moreover, working 180hrs a month even at a modest rate (let’s say $180/hr) means a civilian version of myself would make about $388,000 annually. With these numbers in mind I estimate that over the period of my time in the AF I will have lost about $2.9 million in potential income. Is this worth $200,000 in medical school debt? Being in debt to a bank does not give them the leverage to tell you how to dress, how to cut your hair, that you have to live in Oklahoma for 2yrs, or that you will be separated from your family for 6 months at a time every 12 months until your debt is repaid. And I didn’t even bring up the $60,000 of med school debt I accrued during my 4 years that I was able to recoup thanks to sound real estate investments.
These are the numbers and factors I discuss with any medical student that approaches me with the question about the military scholarship.
In regard to my military practice, I will say it is nice to help others who have made a conscious decision to put something else above themselves-their country. Most people are more intelligent than the average folks I meet moonlighting at county hospitals. As stated above, though, the military system is socialized healthcare. This means that on the majority of my shifts (180hrs/month) I am seeing folks simply due to a lack of access to care. Airmen who can’t get an appointment with their PCM to refill meds, put them on duty restrictions due to an illness/injury, or re-assure them that their “man-cold” does not require antibiotics or hospital admission. During some shifts I see up to 50 patients in 10hrs with less than a 5-10% admission rate (translation: no one is really having emergencies). I am constantly pressured by nurnels (nurse colonels) to complete 2-4 hrs of computer based training monthly. I am treated like an 18-year-old straight out of high school- because they make up the majority of the AF population- and not a respected officer/physician with more than 10 years of post-graduate professional training/education. AND as I write this it is from a desk in the middle of the desert, separated from my wife and family for at least six months. While deployed I am committed to 11 hr night shifts covering a clinic, not even a hospital, seeing the same BS that I would see at home station- not injured combatants or war heroes.
By the time my military commitment is complete I will have been “owned” by the Air Force for 22 years and I will only have 12 years of time in-service that counts towards a military retirement. If I walk away I get nothing other than what I contributed to my TSP. To get a military retirement I would have to do another 8 years active duty, a total of 30 years in service. That is a long time to be under anyone’s thumb, much less work 1.5 times more than my civilian colleagues at 30% of their pay. So I will separate at 12 years and put in reserve time to collect a 33% pension, or about $34,000 annually starting at age 60.
I’m sure this isn’t the typical military scholarship story, but certainly one to consider when making these kinds of life-changing obligations. Looking back on my experiences I believe I am a more disciplined man thanks to my AF training, a better physician thanks to additional years of post-graduate work, and I have a higher tolerance for BS than the average American. But it is hard to ignore my wife and children’s tears during our involuntary separations as we attempt to skype (brokenly) from halfway across the world. As I raise my family and consider my budget each month along with retirement planning I doubt that I made the right financial decisions to make our lives easier in the long run.
Thanks for taking the time to write that (although I suspect you have more time than you know what to do with right now unfortunately.) You outline very well the downsides of military medicine and your story is hardly unique and explains well why I left at the first available opportunity.
The biggest risks of military medicine are that the really bad things happen to you, and you had more than your share of them it sounds like:
1) Long, uninteresting deployments
2) Getting hosed in the military match
3) Being forced to practice a type of medicine you aren’t interested in (flight med, GMO etc)
I was lucky enough to avoid all three of those (although I had two short uninteresting deployments) so I’m significantly more positive than the average AF physician about the experience.
Since this post I was forward deployed to Iraq. I spent 4 months as the only EM physician managing the care of all combat casualties and illnesses for a small forward marine/special forces base. I can certainly say that after the experience I felt like my deployment was justified, I was actually needed. But I have now been tasked to another deployment to afghanistan, less than 8 months after my return from my previous deployment. Although I enjoyed portions of my last deployment this again calls into question my decision to enter the military as a means to pay for medical school. This will mean I spend two consecutive birthdays/holidays/anniversaries for my entire family away. I can’t help but feel overwhelmed. This is certainly not worth the emotional cost despite any potential financial benefits.
Thanks for sharing your experience and for your service. You’ve already done more deployments than I did in my entire four years.
As someone considering this path, I really appreciate you taking the time to write this! It was very insightful into the life as a military doctor. Thank you for sharing and for your service.
Plus you get VA health insurance for life correct?
VA health insurance could be a topic on its own! The short answer is, maybe. You get coverage for service connected problems, i.e. the military wrecks your hearing they cover that. If you have at least a 50% disability rating than they can be your sole provider.
I certainly don’t. It felt morally wrong to me to go try to maximize my disability upon separating, and I wouldn’t have gotten to 50% anyway.
Not to offend anyone, since I am certain you are all good folks. However, my conscious no longer allows me to console my soul by saying that I was following orders, or that I did it for my country. Turning point for me was the second Iraqi invasion. Why did we invade a country that had done nothing to us? Looks at the destruction, heartache, misery we caused in that land.
Whenever my kids want to talk to me about my military experience, I do my best to change the subject. When my son brought up the topic of enlisting in the USAF, I told him to do so only if you are willing to surrender your free will and conscious.
I wonder how many of you are in favor of allowing Iraqi injured and orphans to access VA health system.
I still believe in our country, and may God continue to bless our beautiful land. Yet, I just cant get over the fact how we have moved on to potential new conflicts, and have already forgotten about Iraq
So…are you suggesting that you shouldn’t serve in the military unless you agree with every political position elected leaders advocate? Are you suggesting the military should be disbanded? Are you saying those who serve don’t deserve health care. I can’t quite tell what you’re advocating here.
At any rate, when I signed up for the military, 9/11 hadn’t happened, Afghanistan hadn’t happened, Iraq hadn’t happened etc. But when it came time to do my active duty service, I was serving troops serving in Iraq. If that sort of thing would bother you, I would recommend against using this method to pay for medical school.
Has no one “ask[ed] how you know?” I’m intrigued …
Because I call them all the time for violent patients.
I want to go to the Air Force before med school too. I already know they pay 4 years for you but I wanted to also get an MBA ( the tuition is free) will they let me do that?
And also, how many years you stayed to receive those benefits?
I don’t know about the MBA during med school, but I wouldn’t count on it. As a general rule, if they pay for four years of med school you will spend four years after residency on active duty. Residency is usually an active duty military residency too.
hi i was wondering if you travel to nice places and do u really help people like poor people? or children
Depends what you mean by “nice places.” Sometimes humanitarian missions come up, usually in poor/rural places and sometimes involving peds. These missions are the most rewarding part of being a military doc for and the reason I have stayed in past service obligation. Nice places generally don’t need our help, either for humanitarian or military intervention.
I would be very interested in inviting Doctors with Military experience to speak to audiences over Virtual Topics in the American Future Series.
Please feel free to contact me.
Mike
[email protected]
There are 4 steps to become a military doctor. Step 1: earn a bachelor’s degree. Step 2: earn a medical degree. Step 3: join the military service. Step 4: wait for military residency matching.
Usually steps 2 and 3 are reversed if #4 is in play. You could also go 1, 2, 4 (civilian residency), and 3.
I was drafted in 1971 out of internship and received these benefits:
I was able to use the GI bill during residency.
I got the first signs of MS in the military and have been able to receive a veterans disability check ever since plus veterans medical care.
The 10% savings plan then was limited by the size of your pay check, so I put the max in, and lived on money I had sent from home.
But if I wasn’t drafted, I’d have never joined. I just didn’t have the personality for the military.