ConsueloLpez-Morillas, a professor emerita at Indiana University, Bloomington, started a petition asking lawmakers to cancel student loan debt for doctors, nurses and health care professionals who are responding to the coronavirus pandemic.

More than 385,000 people have signed on since it launchedlast week.

"Health professionals carry crushing loads of student debt, from tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars. Now they are like soldiers in war, saving lives while risking their own and protecting the rest of us, and many have already died while doing their duty," Lopez-Morillas wrotein the petition. "Without the debt burden more would work in lower-paying specialties like family practice, or in underserved rural and urban areas. Society would benefit both in health and economically for many years to come, just as America benefited from the GI Bill."

Today, Carolyn Maloney, a congresswoman from New York, said she will introduce legislation to do just that. The so-called Student Debt Forgiveness for Frontline Health Care Workers Act would eliminate graduate school debt for health care workers who are providing care in response to the coronavirus pandemic. It would include recent graduates and professionals who are still paying off their loans.

Medical professionals in hospitals and other medical settings are operating in extraordinarily difficult and dangerous circumstances to provide care for critically ill COVID-19 patients and protect our communities. New York City has been hit particularly hard in the pandemic, and many other areas of the country are beginning to experience surges in patients with COVID-19 symptoms, putting great stress on health care institutions and their employees. The least we can do to recognize their service is to forgive their graduate student loan debt so that they are not forced to worry about their financial wellbeing in addition to their health and the health of their families while they respond to a public health emergency," Maloney said in a news release.

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Movement to Forgive Health Care Workers' Student Debt - Inside Higher Ed