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SD Health Dept. Slaps Doctors in Face with Fed Med School Debt Relief

While Republicans strangle President Joe Biden’s student debt relief plan in court, the Republican regime in South Dakota is happily taking Biden bucks to give some healthcare workers a break on their student loans:

The application period closes Wednesday, November 23, at 5 p.m. CT for South Dakota’s state loan repayment program. It offers bonuses of up to $25,000 per year to primary care, mental health and dental health providers who practice in the state’s many rural and urban Health Professional Shortage Areas.

The South Dakota Department of Health is receiving $503,000 yearly over three years for a total $1,509,000 from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the federal Health Resources and Services Administration.

The funding came through the American Rescue Plan Act that Congress passed in 2021. South Dakota’s three Republicans — Rep. Dusty Johnson, Sen. Mike Rounds and Sen. John Thune — voted against the act [Bob Mercer, “Federal Bonuses Help SD Face Healthcare Shortage,” KELO-TV, 2022.11.17].

These Biden handouts are surely as much of a slap in the face to thousands of hard-working doctors and nurses who paid off their own student loans as the debt relief the USDA is giving to some parasitic South Dakota farmers. Yet South Dakota’s Republican Governor is taking no action to stop this affront to fiscal decency.

South Dakota Republicans need to take matters into their own hands and stage grassroots resistance to this creeping socialism. South Dakota Republicans, ask your doctor (and nurse, and pharmacist, and family therapist…) about student debt relief. If your doctor has taken any of these Biden bucks, pull your pants back up and march right out of the exam room. Go find yourself a reputable, self-reliant practitioner of the healing arts who takes not one penny of filthy government lucre.

9 Comments

  1. Mark

    Right on, Cory! I wonder if when Kristi said recently she needs to be talking to ‘All’ americans if that means mr Fury will start to make room on her calendar for local Liberal press?

  2. Jake

    The SD state GOP really can’t fathom two words: hypocrisy and shame! Their lust/greed for continued power leads to very evident lowered standards-even for them.

  3. bearcreekbat

    Which is worse, hypocrisy or consistent bad policy decisions? While eliminating both is certainly a worthy goal, as is calling out hypocrites, there is more than one reason why perfection is often considered the enemy of the good, or as Ralph Waldo Emerson opined:

    A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall.

    Despite the obvious hypocrisy of Republican politicians implementation of this program sure seems worthwhile for SD.

  4. Richard Schriever

    Mark- your emphasis of understanding Mrs. Noem’s phrase is on the wrong word there, She isnlt interested in “all”, but in only in (real) “Americans”. Much like Cory’s identification of the “Manly” America subtly referenced in the Trumpian version of our country, Mrs. Noem only views a subsection of the total populace as (real) Americans.

  5. O

    bearcreekbat, I have always thought the “. . . shadow on the wall.” an allusion to Plato’s allegory of the cave in that Emerson line.

  6. bearcreekbat

    O, that is an interesting observation that I suspect hits the mark!

  7. It’s interesting Cory. The people who settled South Dakota and North Dakota were among the first socialists. It’s really only a matter of time.

  8. It could be a good point in Hillsdale studies of South Dakota.

  9. grudznick

    Mr. H is righter than right that people should boycott these particular doctors. At this particular time, that is.

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