While AA is an issue, OP most benefited from the Physician cartel/AMA who lobbies/bribes their way to wealth for their members at the expense of the 99% of the population.
I've watched the full set of lectures for a few classes at top universities (Yale, MIT, that kind of thing) for a topic area in which I took a lot of classes at a very-cheap low-tier ex-normal-school state university that's completely unknown outside a ~150 mile radius, and only somewhat recognized within it.
From what I could tell, the content, pace, and amount & sort of assigned work were all pretty similar.
What differed? Two main things:
1) The guest lecturers—cheap state school, none, or unremarkable ones; the fancy schools, both more common to have them, and universally very impressive credentials, possibly someone you've heard of even if you don't really follow the topic, basically, their guests were "celebrities", at least within a field.
2) How engaged the students seemed to be—not at all, at the cheap state school; very, at the fancy schools.
This is for undergrad. The ways they differ may not be the same in grad school.
Maybe my (large, relatively well respected state school) lectures were uniquely bad. But I found MIT lectures to be leagues ahead of what we got. They covered more content, went deeper and were faster paced. The lecturers were more talented and engaging, and the problem sets were harder and more efficient. It really was night and day.
https://www.ama-assn.org/education/gme-funding/save-graduate...
Around the healthcare debate specifically, there were a lot of people who talked about the restrictive policies that artificially limit the supply of doctors as well as the policies that prevent the creation of more hospitals.
When my dad was growing up, his father was a mechanic and he really just wanted to go be a mechanic to work with his dad...who told him that it wouldn't support 2 families. So instead...my dad became a dentist. Don't get me wrong, he's very smart (particularly with math) but how many people could be doctors? How many people could handle the curriculum at MIT, Harvard, Stanford, Georgia Tech, Vanderbilt, etc?
My guess is that it's a whole lot more than are actually admitted. Further, is the curriculum at these schools that much better than everywhere else or is it more a factor of surrounding yourself with highly motivated peers that makes it better?