One correction: medical schools are running between $140,000 and $190,0000 for four years. $850,000 is, I think, a vast overestimation of a Cardiologist’s income. A realistic cap is around $400,000 for that field, perhaps a little higher for dermatology, orthopedic surgery. I’m not sure where plastics fit in, but I’m guessing it’s on the high end as well. $100,000 is accurate for FP (one of the reasons nobody wants to do it).
Check some of the top research universities. Some of the cardiologists there do pull in high income that tops $1 million.
Then you have to factor in the cost of malpractice insurance, which varies widely by field, and the risk of becoming uninsurable and for all practical purposes unable to earn a living at the profession you’ve gone heavily into debt for, because of a trumped up claim supported by a jury of welfare bums who view malpractice awards as something akin to winning the lottery for the person who receives them.
Last year I was talking to a former ob/gyn who’d been in practice for 30 years, never had a single malpractice claim, much less award, and had given up ob a year earlier when his annual malpractice insurance premium was raised to over $250,000. If he’d had an award against him, he probably wouldn’t even be able to practice as a gyn anymore.