Loan Repayment (during residency)

Please know I could be WAY off with my thoughts/ideas/conclusions - I tend to rant and expect the worst - I also gathered some of my information from message boards which are in no way a reliable or accurate source!
Okay I think I may, (and I emphasize may) have figured it out... This has seriously been so frustrating. I know I posted before that I you could forbear your loans for the entirety of residency but since then I have heard a number of conflicting things. On various boards (namely iMSN) they keep talking about this new 15% rule. Various MS4s (fourth year medical students) who have been through their loan exit interviews have been saying that there is no more deferment/forbearance and that it has been replaced by this new 15% rule. Well after a few weeks of various inquiries and searches I have found this article.
To my now limited understanding the government has eliminated economic hardship forbearance. The economic hardship forbearance was nice because all residents qualified due to their modest incomes and it allowed residents to make NO payments their first three years of residency; also during this time interest did not acquire (or if it did I think the government paid it). After these three years of economic hardship forbearance were up residents could simply defer their payments if they wished and interest would continue to acquire on their loans.
Now this new plan does not allow residents to forbear at all and they can either defer and interest acquires (which I guess can be dangerous because interest continues to acquire and can capitalize and whatnot) or enter repayment. (This is the part where the information is even more sketchy are less reliable)
So if you ask me these new plan stinks! Consider that a $200,000 loan debt is quite normal for the average medical student. A 10-year repayment plan at the 6.8% interest rate amounts to.....
.............................
...............
......
...
$2,300 a month
The average residency salary is around $42,000 - this leaves a resident with approximately $500 a month to live.... (I'm not sure if you can put medical school loans on longer terms).... so obviously if a resident doesn't want to defer and have interest accrue and capitalize their only option (unless they have a sugar-daddy/momma or another massive source of income) is Income Based Repayment (IBR/the 15% rule). So this 15% rule looks pretty good... for a minute.... and if your not married to someone with student loan debts...
If your married (I was told that) your spouse has to sign onto this agreement and the problem can be that you are stuck paying 30% of your income (15% of both of your incomes towards each loan). While I am not sure if this is accurate - I was also told that an option to avoid this is to file separate taxes. (Which then causes you to lose out on several tax benefits - resulting in a different cost). But with the separate taxes then you would only each pay 15% of your own loans? I dunno this is all confusing stuff. While I would have no problem paying 15% of Drew's residency salary during his residency, I don't like the idea of having to pay 30% of both of our salaries, especially if we live in an expensive city. Based on my unscientific, uneducated, calculations, even if I was hypothetically making a meager $40,000 salary we could still be responsible for $2,000 a month payments ($80,000 * 15% then divided by 12 months). Then again I would hope the 15% rule is only based on take home pay, rather than before taxes salary.
Perhaps we can defer but still make optional payments? I just don't like the idea of having to pay a large payment every month. Good thing I have more than a year to figure (worry about) this thing out!
And since I was trying my hardest to find everything wrong with IBR I forgot to mention that the another advantage of it is that (again I think) that if your payments are still less than the rate that interest is acquiring then the government pays that interest. So I guess my final conclusion is that this IBR plan may not be a bad plan for single/unmarried residents but I think it could potentially be bad for married couples who both have student loans.
If you stayed with me this long - thanks for your patience... please leave comments or email me if you have more accurate information/corrections! Thanks!