- Hawaii announced the first recipients of a student-loan repayment program for healthcare workers.
- Nearly 500 workers will get up to $100,000 in debt relief if they work in the state for two years.
Some healthcare workers in Hawaii might be on track for six figures in student-loan forgiveness.
Just days before Christmas, Hawaii Gov. Josh Green announced that 492 healthcare workers had been selected for the state's first cohort of the Hawaii Healthcare Education Loan Repayment Program, or HELP program. The program promises to repay up to $100,000 of the worker's student loans — $50,000 per year — as long as they commit to working full-time for two years in the state.
"It is so rewarding to see this program come to fruition, as it was this type of assistance that first brought me to Hawai'i so many years ago," Green, a physician himself, said in a statement.
"I saw firsthand how desperately needed medical care is, especially in rural areas of the islands and for underserved populations," he continued. "HELP will prove to be a great start toward decreasing our long-standing and challenging shortage of healthcare professionals across the state."
According to HELP's fact sheet, a two-year commitment is required to benefit from the program, and continuation is then evaluated on a year-by-year basis. The worker must be licensed in Hawaii to qualify, and they must take a minimum 30% of patience on public insurance. Those who wish to apply for the next cohort can do so here.
The program is funded with $30 million from the Hawaii state legislature and an additional $5 million from the CEO of Salesforce, Mark Benioff, and his wife, Lynne Benioff.
Hawaii's program is just one of a number of efforts on the state level to get student-debt relief to borrowers. In Maine, for example, the state's lawmakers in 2022 were proposing up to $40,000 in debt relief for first-time homebuyers in the state.
These efforts come as the fate of broader student-loan forgiveness remains uncertain at the federal level. At the end of June, the Supreme Court struck down President Joe Biden's first attempt at broad student-loan forgiveness, and the Education Department announced the same day that it would be pursuing a narrower scale of relief using the Higher Education Act of 1965.
The department recently concluded negotiations with stakeholders over what the text of the relief should look like, and the public can expect an opportunity to comment on the proposals early next year.
Still, millions of federal borrowers are in the midst of a return to repayment after an over-three-year pause. With the burden of an additional monthly bill, many are waiting to see when, or if, they will see a reduction in their balances.
In the meantime, targeted programs, like the one Hawaii is implementing for healthcare workers, might help.
"One of the one of the key lessons we've learned over the years is we simply don't have enough healthcare providers in the places we need the most," Green said during a December 22 press conference. "So, our team has been thinking about this for quite some time."