Sorry, it just sounds like a crazy idea for me :)...

We clearly don't have a free market in place for education, and there too we see lots of people who can't afford what they want. And the solution we're given is for the government to give more money to the potential customers, thereby creating more demand (and thus increasing the prices).

It's been said before, but it needs to be said again: When solving a problem, the government should first identify what it is doing to make the problem worse, and stop doing that, before investigating other potential solutions.

The middle 50% earned between $55,660 and $93,080. The lowest 10% earned less than $44,800, and the highest 10% earned more than $118,750. Median annual earnings in the industries employing the largest numbers of electrical engineers in 2006 were:

Computer and office equipment: $70,850
Measuring and control devices: $72,070
Search and navigation equipment: $70,790
Electronic peripherals, components and accessories: $73,010
Engineering service firms: $66,350
Federal Government $71,320
Telecommunications, RF: $74,730

Salaries in 2006 for new grads: BSEEs received starting offers averaging $54,830; MS grads averaged $68,180; and new PhDs averaged $80,440. Advanced degrees are in the high demand by both Fortune 500s and start-ups. Highest salaries for experienced engineers were concentrated on the east and west coasts, and averaged nearly 5.1% higher than the rest of the country.

So my $70k figure doesn't hold up on the average or median, but was biased by the knowledge I had of the defense industry.

In fact, the four degreed people I fired in my career were all PhDs who thought they could work on their own projects of choice and not anything that benefited the company: how very arrogant they were!

(To fire someone is a very long and tedious documentation process in most companies, involving shifting managers, keeping a detailed book on every step and assignment given and the results obtained, and then reviews at three levels of management. So it was a careful, well-documented, and fair process, and not an arbitrary decision.)

The main reason for working residents so hard is simple: it is very low cost labor for the flooding ER business, which is more than half made up by illegal immigrants in many hospitals, and they cannot turn them away. The flood where my SIL was in residency was incredible. He did over a hundred deliveries in his second year; almost all were Hispanics with no insurance.

The college grad could have gone to work immediately at a decent salary, say $70,000 per year

I wish that were the typical case. I would be looking at a much better financial situation when I move back home next year.
Here are some median science salaries*:
biologist 1 $52,002, biochemist 1 $52,002, chemist 1 $42,462,clinical researcher 1 $52,409, geologist 1 $41,058, pysisist 1 $47,200, academic researcher 1 $49,534. Drop 2-5K from that for starting salary and keep in mind that these positions generally require at least a masters, so add another 2 years of unpaid education. These positions generally top out near 100K. Competition for these positions is high and often positions that require a masters have PhDs in the pool. Add another 4 years for the PhD and the MD and PhD are looking for employment at about the same time and the MDs have made more money over that period and are looking forward to making more money after their education though their debt load is generally considerably higher.

I think we are in agreement that there needs to be considerable reform in medical education in the US.
I see no reason other than short supply (and a bit of I did it so you should have to as well) to demand 80+ hour work weeks for medical residents.
I see no valid reason for the severely restricted number of medical school positions. I would not be uncomfortable with a GP who got the occasional B in their undergraduate courses.
More NP positions should be encouraged etc.

* add about 10K for engineering positions

We are getting into hypothetical territory here. I consider two cases: 1) the total expenses incurred while getting a medical degree, and the resulting debt; and 2) What the same bright student might have done right out of college with a chem or science degree.

Both incur the same total expenses for the first four years.

The college grad could have gone to work immediately at a decent salary, say $70,000 per year, and by the time our med student exited residency, this grad would have banked over $420,000, of which, if he paid himself 10% first, he would have well over $42,000 in savings, and 6 years of a much more comfortable lifestyle (not counting raises). If we plotted it out, hypothetically, the med guy would probably not equalize for another 10 or more years.

The only conclusion I can draw from this hypothetical is that most people that go into the medical profession sacrifice heavily in a fiscal sense and in a family sense for many, many years, before they reach a comfortable living situation.

It follows that any limitations put on doctor salaries would have to be phased in over a long time to be somewhat fair to those who committed to the task of getting a med degree and incurred heavy debt to do so, in consideration that in the end they would receive very adequate compensation down the road. Change that possibility, and you will change the number of bright people that elect such a grueling path as well.

My Son-in-Law had two years of far more than 80 hours a week (more like 100), until the last year of residency, when the rules were changed to limit hours to 80, which he said was a joke because of the ways around the rules that were "discovered".

The bottom line for me is that doctor's salaries might be capped at some very large figure, but we are obligated to see them into a decent living situation by not arbitrarily limiting their income. Or else we are cutting off our noses...

The AMA left out half of the expenses. They did not account for living expenses,

The numbers came from the AMSA not the AMA. The first was about how much debt medical students actually graduate with not what the total bill was. That seems to me to be the more relevant number if we are talking about how much they must make to pay for their education. If it cost a million dollars to get a degree, but that was entirely funded by some entity other than the student then the amount they must make to do well is less than if the total cost was 100,000 and the student had to foot the entire bill.

The numbers given later were costs to the school per student per year. Some combination of tuition and other moneys must pay this if the school it to continue.

Living on $30,000 a year with a family is a huge challenge,

34K is on the low end of residency salaries. Still if you break that down by hours likely worked they are getting less than $10/hr.

The larger problem with having a family at this stage would seem to me the complete lack of time to spend with said family. An 80 hour a week residency seems to me entirely unnecessary to develop good physicians.

Anesthesiology is among the best paid non-surgeon specializations and requires a longer residency.

Also not accounted for, or buried in the numbers, it seems, is the help given to med students by parents and others, part-time jobs, and scholarships given to promising students.

Six of my Son-in-Law's classmates, however, had debts topping $500k after residency, according to him, and they were obviously desperate to find a good practice to join at a high income. Not all did. This class was for specialty,anesthesiology, so it is perhaps at the higher expense end.

It does?????

Anyone have an idea what it takes financially to get a medical degree...Takes a long time to pay off that loan!

It is certainly expensive, but the indebtedness is a bit less than your numbers would indicate.
According to the American Association of Medical Colleges' 2006 report 86% of med school graduates carry debt and the median debt is 119K for public schools and 150K for private schools. A small but significant percentage of students have debt greater than 350K and tuition has been growing rather rapidly.

Residency is typically paid between 34K and 46K for the first year and increases yearly. Residency for a specialization will earn you an extra few K per year. Fifth year residents are typically making 50-55K. During this period you are generally fed while on duty, parking is paid, and you have pretty good medical insurance.* It is a lot of work for relatively little money, but you shouldn't be going further in the hole (other than interest on you possibly deferred student loans).

According the the American Medical Students Association studies have found that total cost per student per year range from 146.5K to 178.6K. Roughly 1/3 of that is instructional expenses and 2/3 educational recourses.

With federal and state governments looking to make cuts, education budgets for higher education often end up on the chopping block. This exacerbates the already large problem. It is already largely responsible for an over 300% 10 year increase in public medical school tuition. There was a 165% contemporaneous rise in private medical school tuition.

Bare bones living expenses, married: $30,000/year
So, about $300,000 for the total period.

So, in total: $700,000 (give or take a few bucks)

Average starting wage: maybe: $200,000 at best.
For nitpickers, median is maybe: $150,000.

Takes a long time to pay off that loan! Meanwhile, it is hard to live on prestige, buy a home, buy a decent auto, pay your taxes, and live decently.

Then comes the insurance problem: $50,000 to $100,000 or more per year for malpractice, depending on specialization and area, and not counting personal life insurance.

You can practice until the age of 60. After that you cannot get malpractice insurance at an affordable rate. So you end up with maybe 32 years of productive time.

Seems to me one would be saddled with a heavy load for about 20 years, and then have to pay for the kid's education too, mostly in parallel. Or, you can pass that problem on to them.

At 60+ you just might be well off, unless someone cuts the rug out from under you and lowers wages and such in some arbitrary manner, thus destroying your 32-year bootstrap plan.

We can take this even further and train people do diagnose common ailments like ear-infections or strep-throat, set broken bones, or stitch less severe cuts. This model of one size fit's all is terribly inefficient.

Handing out more money for health care increases the number of people who can place demands on the system, causing prices to rise. The mere fact that anyone walking into an emergency room must under law at least be stabilized also increases demand, leading to increase prices.

Supply is decreasing because the freedom to enter the medical field is restricted by the profession itself for the benefit of its members; those members in turn have been essentially handed over to the tort lawyers for their own selfish enrichment. So supply is lower than it ought.

To really fix the health care system, the government must stop limiting the supply of medical care and stop increasing the demand for medical care.

On the supply side, the government can take away the medical profession's highly unconstitutional privilege of restricting entry into the medical field, and it can institute common-sense tort reform so that doctors are no longer prey for the lawyers.

On the demand side, the government should identify lifestyle decisions that increase the demand for health care, and refuse to fund health care for anyone making that choice. Smokers, for instance, should be ineligible for any government-funded care for cardio-pulmonary illnesses.