Two bills push loan forgiveness, take aim at nursing shortage
By Glen Fest
March 26, 2003
WASHINGTON-Two bills that would establish student loan forgiveness programs
for practicing nurses and nurse instructors have been introduced in Congress.
The Teacher and Nurse Support Act and the Nurse Loan Forgiveness Act would erase up to $17,500 in student loan debt for nurses. The bills' authors intend for the new programs to attract candidates into the profession and stem the nation's critical nursing shortage.
The bills are distinct in their proposals and applications-the Nurse Loan Forgiveness Act, for example, is a temporary 10-year program-but each has drawn key support from health care trade organizations, including the American Hospital Association and the American Organization of Nurse Executives.
The proposals would supplement the few existing government-backed repayment or forgiveness programs, usually limited to a small number of professionals in critical-need regions or industries.
"The loan forgiveness concept is an age-old concept" for professions, such as teachers and child care workers, said Debbie Campbell, director of government affairs for the American Associa-tion of Colleges of Nursing. "But they are new for nursing."
The Teacher and Nurse Support Act, introduced last month by Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, D-N.Y., would expand loan forgiveness and cancellation programs for teachers and nurses. The bill, HR 934, would wipe clean loans given to full-time nurses serving in a clinical setting or as a nursing instructor at an accredited nursing college.
The federal government will pay off nurses' loan obligations up to $17,500 on a graduated payment schedule over five years-starting with $2,000 after the first year of work, and covering up to a $5,000 in the final year of the required service period.
The bill has been referred to the House Committee on Education and the Workforce. A companion Senate bill is scheduled for introduction in the near future, Campbell said.
The Nurse Loan Forgiveness Act is on the agenda for the subcommittee with Education and the Workforce, after being introduced in February by Reps. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., and Loretta Sanchez, D-Calif. Nurses in a medical facility or an "approved health care setting" will be eligible for a loan forgiveness program that would pay off up to $17,000 over a five-year period of employment.
The Nurse Loan Forgiveness Act-like the Support act-would pay off on a graduated scale from the first through the fifth year of employment.
There has been no discussion yet whether the two bills could be merged later in committee.
The Tancredo bill has found more backing so far in Congress, gaining 41 bipartisan co-sponsors to the five Democratic co-sponsors signing on with the Teacher and Nurse Support Act.
According to Tancredo's office, nurses receive loan forgiveness through only two means: either the federal Perkins loan program or the 2002 Nurse Reinvestment Act. Loans forgiven through the Nurse Reinvestment Act go only to nurses working in designated medical facilities with recognized nurse staffing shortages.
Both bills would allow employed nurses to wipe out their federal Stafford loans taken out since October 1998.
The Tancredo-Sanchez bill applies only to registered nurses. McCarthy's bill applies to all licensed vocational or practicing nurses, as well as RNs, and covers diplomas to graduate nursing degrees.
McCarthy's bill, which would reimburse or cancel student loans for nurses who enter teaching, is a welcome proposal to alleviate the nation's nursing faculty crunch, according to Campbell.
Nursing instructors alleviated of loan repayment schedules will be able to take on additional graduate-level studies, where only 525 nurse instructors earned doctoral degrees in 2002. American Association of Colleges of Nursing statistics from October 2000 reported a 64 percent national vacancy rate in doctoral faculty positions at nursing schools.
More than 5,000 nursing school applicants were turned away last year because of a lack of enrollment space, the association reported last year. Schools find it more difficult to compete with clinical salaries as budget woes increase, and many are forced to accelerate student course work or enter into creative alliances with hospitals and organizations that provide part-time faculty and resources.
"There is a backlog in many areas of the country and we will have to address the faculty shortage before we can get to the bottom of the nursing shortage," Campbell said.
More than 126,000 staff nursing vacancies exist in hospitals across the country, and the U.S. Department of Labor has projected a need for 1 million new and replacement nurses by 2010. That far exceeds what the annual nursing school graduation level of about 34,000 can produce.
Nursing school enrollment is down compared to 1995, according to the American Association of Colleges of Nursing, but in December the organization issued findings noting that 2002 enrollment increased slightly from 2001 in most nursing schools. Enrollment is expected to continue on the upswing, as many second-career nurses abandon unstable job sectors in business and technology.
Neither bill has been scored by the Congressional Budget Office to determine potential costs of the programs.
Contact Glen Fest at glenf@nurseweek.com