Graduating medical school with mortgage-like debt

The NEJM has an article detailing the spiraling costs of attending medical school:

The cost of obtaining a medical education has been spiraling upward for the past 20 years. Despite a lot of rhetoric in articles and at meetings of the Association of American Medical Colleges, nothing has happened to change the alarming pattern. The average tuition and fees at public medical schools during the 2003-–2004 academic year amounted to $16,153, and the corresponding figure for private schools was $32,588. Adding $20,000 to $25,000 for living expenses, books, and equipment brings the estimated cost of four years of attendance to about $140,000 for public schools and $225,000 for private schools.

Accompanying this continuing escalation, there has been an enormous increase in the average indebtedness of graduating students. The average debt carried by 1984 graduates was $22,000 for public school and $26,500 for private school. By 2004, the debt had increased to $105,000 for public school and $140,000 for private school, and only about 20 percent of medical students graduated with no debt.

Here is a graph illustrating this issue: