Mariann Torres dreamed of becoming a doctor for years, but unlike some of her peers, Torres comes from a “nontraditional background.” Born in Los Angeles and raised by a single mother, she spent her childhood in Guadalajara, Mexico, and returned to the US when she was 11.

Last year, Torres was admitted to five medical schools.

“It has taken me 10 years to get into medical school. I have done 5 years of informal post-bacc(alaureate) work which cost $10,000. I had to retake the MCAT [Medical College Admission Test]. And I’ve had to pay for everything myself,” Torres said. She will be attending the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, Madison, Wisconsin, in the fall. Torres deferred a year so she could attend to her own medical issues before starting.

Torres now regrets her decision of deferring a year. That’s because President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act (US Law 119-21) goes into effect July 1, 2026.

Proponents of the new law say it will curb overborrowing and force medical schools to lower tuition and fees. Those costs currently average about $400,000, according to the American Association of Medical Colleges (AAMC).

The new law eliminates low-interest Grad PLUS loans, on which 40% of current medical students rely, according to AAMC. It also caps federal student loans of $50,000 per year, with a lifetime cap of $200,000. Now, many students will have to turn to more costly private loans to make up the difference.

“How are people like me supposed to pay for medical school?” Torres asked. “It definitely keeps me up at night.”

A Financially Daunting Dream

The new law is making an already financially daunting prospect for students, said Ezra Cinamon, 27, who lives in New York and is applying to medical schools. 

“There was always this big financial burden that people were willing to take on to go to medical school because there was an albeit difficult but tenable path forward,” said the new father, who hopes to be a neurologist or psychiatrist. “I think now that calculus might be shifting.” 

A career in medicine simply will not be an option for many students, especially those from historically underrepresented groups, said Dobrushe Denburg, president of the National Pre-Medical Association (NPREMA) and volunteer in New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center’s pediatric emergency department.

Students from low- and middle-income households already face many obstacles when it comes to going to medical school, Denburg said.

“It seems like a big dream, and now it’s become a big, more expensive dream.” She noted the new lifetime cap on federal loans only covers one half of the average cost of medical school. “To make up a shortfall of $200,000 probably is close to impossible for students from low-income families.”

Future Impacts

The AAMC’s Kristen Earle doubts the new law will prompt medical schools to lower tuition. Medical school tuition has risen about 81% over a 21-year period, outpacing inflation, but it has risen at a slower rate than colleges at large, according to the AAMC.

Corrected for cost of living, medical school costs have stabilized in the past 10 years, according to the AAMC.

“We found the primary driver of increased cost of attendance for medical students in recent years has been the rising cost of living and not tuition,” Earle said. 

“We are very concerned that the new borrowing caps, coupled with the elimination of the Grad PLUS loan program, will create significant financial barriers for medical students, especially those from low income, rural and nontraditional backgrounds,” said Earle, who is director of student financial services for AAMC.

She said private loans have fewer borrower protections, come with stricter credit requirements, and could deter prospective students from entering the field altogether.

Vicki Vollweiler, founder and CEO of College Financial Prep, added that students who need co-signers on private loans, but whose parents have low incomes, no credit, or bad credit will be unable to get private loans, she said. Likewise, parents with good credit may agree to co-sign a loan, and years later, the student may be unable to pay.

“Then the parents are left with the loan, hurting their retirement,” she said. 

Family Planning

Noble Zaghi, PhD, sees a different kind of negative impact on families. 

“For my students, these policies aren’t abstract. They shape their lives,” said Zaghi, who runs a test preparation business called MCAT King.

“Finances have always been a deciding factor for my students, and the new loan caps make that even more obvious.”

Zaghi said many of the pre-meds he coaches are admitted to both private and public schools. Students often choose the cheapest school rather than the best one. The new law will exacerbate this trend. Likewise, Zaghi said students’ family planning choices will be affected. The disappearing Grad PLUS loans allowed students to borrow the full cost of attendance, including child care expenses in the form of a dependent-care allowance.

“When spouses have limited income, families often struggle to support children while the student is in training,” Zaghi said. He referenced a 2023 survey of fourth-year medical students that showed financial stability and the high cost of children were major reasons to postpone or avoid family building.

“Many students described how debt made having a child during training seem impossible,” he said. Zaghi added, “I’m advocating for both affordable education and loan policies that let students support themselves and their families during this long and demanding journey.”

Addressing Disparities

Zaghi and others also expressed concern over the law’s impacts on efforts to diversify medicine. “The overarching goal of our organization is to bring equity into the pre-medical process,” NPREMA’s Denburg said. The organization offers resources, like scholarships and MCAT preparation, to make medical school more affordable. “We have been trying to bridge the gap,” she said. “This is the opposite of bridging the gap,” she added.

Making medical school a possibility for students from low- and middle-income families not only diversifies medicine but goes a long way toward addressing health disparities due to access when medical students return to their communities of origin to set up practice, said Bobby Mukkamala, MD, president of the American Medical Association, who lives in Flint, Michigan.

“You are not going to come to a place like this to practice medicine unless there is a reason,” said Mukkamala, who described his hometown as being underserved. “Usually, that reason is a social or family connection.”

However, practicing in such areas means lower pay. Mukkamala worried that the new law makes it even less likely underserved areas will attract debt-ridden physicians. “There’s a gap between what it will cost and what they will earn,” he said.

Worsening Physician Shortages

The field of medicine cannot afford to be dissuading the next generation of talented students from becoming doctors, Mukkamala said. It will only hurt patients. “It’s not good for the health of our country,” he said. “We have a huge percentage of physicians that are ready to retire, physician burnout is something that is going to leave us short, and we don’t have enough people coming in,” Mukkamala explained in an interview. “That’s a triple whammy.”

Mukkamala pointed to an AAMC study that showed the US will face a shortage of about 80,000 physicians by the year 2036. He argued that when health systems rely on nonphysicians — “physician extenders” like nurse practitioners and physician assistants — to deliver care, the quality of healthcare goes down. “We need people that are well-trained to fill the gaps,” he said. The new bill, he added, “flies in the face of that plan.”

The new law will also likely increase the number of physicians choosing high-paying specialty practices over primary care, Mukkamala and Zaghi said. Mukkamala pointed to a 2019 study published in The BMJ that showed 31% of physicians switched from primary care to a specialty practice. “That’s not what we want. We want them to choose a career that they love, not one that they have to choose based on finances.”

The High Cost of Debt

One of the provisions of the new law worrying Torres is that private loans are not eligible for loan forgiveness programs. “Even if I serve all my life in a low-income community, it wouldn’t matter for loan forgiveness,” Torres said. “So, the new law is essentially taking away that flexibility and additional support for doctors who want to go into communities like mine.”