I wasn't wording things clearly. The 200k is just the median residual debt from medical school alone. People don't tend to pay it off much during residency years though, since residency pay is relatively low (50-70k). Lots of them acquire extra personal debt during residency. Doctors aren't typically considered "trained" until after residency.

My wife had $210k in debt from medical school. It's basically impossible to pay it off durning residency, so it just balloons.

All in, at the end of my wife's training, we would have been $1M ahead if she had simply worked a normal career. That's huge in your 20's and 30's when your trying to establish a house/family/etc.

It probably costs more than that.

As a baseline, university education in Finland costs about €10k/year on the average. Medical education is more expensive than the average, probably between €15k and €20k a year. Universities in the US are generally better funded than those in Finland, which allows them to provide more personal attention to the students. And university salaries are higher in the US than in Finland.

Overall, I would estimate something like $20k/year for the undergraduate degree and $30k to $40k/year for the medical school, for a total of $200k to $240k. And that's just for the education, not including costs of living as a student.

Sounds great, but my wife’s state-funded public medical school cost $85k/yr usd before cost of living.

There are a handful of state medical schools near the $40k/r, but they are on the much cheaper end

I was estimating the costs of providing the education, not the prices of getting it. (The latter would be €0/year in Finland.) If a university can charge more, it can usually find a way to spend the extra money.