New Kaiser Permanente medical school plans to waive tuition

(HealthDay)—A new medical school to be opened by California-based health system Kaiser Permanente will waive tuition for all students in its first five graduating classes.

The goal is to make it easier for people with lower incomes to go to medical school and to keep students from bypassing lower-paid specialties like family medicine because they are burdened with high levels of debt, The New York Times reported.

"Even middle-class families are finding medical school hard to pay for," said Mark Schuster, the founding dean and chief executive of the Kaiser Permanente School of Medicine. "We're going to see how this plays out and learn from it."

Kaiser's new medical school will be one of only a few in the United States not connected to a university. Kaiser has its own hospitals, clinics, doctors, and insurance plan.