If you’re up for it, the minimum time required to be a primary care doc currently is 7 years (4 for medical school, 3 for residency). Medical school could easily cost you $250,000 for the four years (a lot more if you pay it off over time via a student loan), and you won’t be able to work during that time, so there will be no income.
Primary care docs are also underpaid, in large measure because the system doesn’t appreciate ‘thinking’. You can easily make more for ‘freezing’ a mole with liquid nitrogen in the office than you can for an office visit that takes a lot more time.
I’m not dissuading you, and I admire your motivation, but the issues are real.
The other thing I am not mentioning is that I’d be starting the process in my 40’s... that combined with my distaste of both the government-industrial-academia complex and the similarly unpalatable government-big-medicine/Pharma complex... well I would, no doubt, become an evil doctor.
I should probably, in all truth, make the time to apply for and sit for the P.E. exam since that’s my present career path and I have everything needed for that... B.S.M.E., E-I-T, like over 15 years working under the supervision of a P.E.
Career change is appealing to me, though... I doubt people are willing to pay for someone that thinks though... like you said.