First, if you take out over $200k in student loans you will never be able to service them on minimum wage. Residents earn slightly more than minimum wage (per week, less by hour) and most feel the need to defer their loan payments because they find they can't do both that and pay the bills. So it's not a financially sound move. Most undergrads have never worked full time and had to pay the bills of a household so they don't have a good idea of how little minimum wage buys you. And once you have a family and a mortgage on top of student loans, you simply aren't capable of living a minimum wage lifestyle. There's a reason that minimum wage jobs have incredibly high turnover -- everyone wants to live better than this. There is simply no reason that someone who went to 4 years of college, 4 years of med school and probably 4 years of residency training should be paid the exact same as the kid who dropped out of high school 15 years earlier. Even if you don't make bank you need to at least make a return on your time investment
Second, since about 50% of applicants (and a greater percent of premeds) won't get into a US med school, it makes total sense to me that there are probably sad sack's out there who think this way -- that it's not fair that they can't become doctors and that they would genuinely do it for a fraction of the price. Living out your dream for a fraction of the salary is better than not at all. And there are plenty of countries in the world where doctor is a low paid job, so there is certainly precedent for this -- there are people out there who will do the job because it makes them happy, even if it makes them broke.
Finally, there's the whole altruism thing. A few weeks back someone put a very interesting news clip on the board of some dude in upstate NY who is practicing medicine for nearly nothing and using whatever money he earns to buy medicine and birthday cakes for his patients. And you will come across more than a few rural FPs who take chickens and venison as payment from their impoverished patients (a la Doc Hollywood), because that's what they have to pay with and there's no other doctor around. so yeah, there will always be mother theresa types out there who want to accomplish something other than earn a living, and I really have no problem with that. I have seen no convincing argument that such a person is a better "doctor", although he might be a better person. I personally don't consider altruism to be the any better a motivation than earning a living -- both should be side perqs for the job, and neither should be your primary motivation to go into a field. Actually being interested in and wanting to do the job and what it entails should be the real motivation. (Basically you should want to perform the tasks involved in being a doctor, and as a side benefit if you can earn a living and help people, that's great, but those latter things really shouldn't be your primary driving force). If giving away your services makes you happy, then go for it. But it shouldn't and needn't be your business model.
Go live and work in some impoverished area where folks can't pay your bills and have no insurance. Go be a missionary. That's great. But don't suggest that anyone else in the field ought to follow in your path. One or two folks like this in every crowd is sustainable. Having a lot in every crowd is damaging -- the better folks in the profession who not only want to be a doctor but also have a family and home ownership (not really haughty goals) simply won't be able to be a doctor and maintain these other dreams and so the profession will lose a big chunk of them. Bad idea for medicine. Having doctors paid poorly in other countries tends to mean the "best and brightest" move to other fields or other countries. The profession of medicine is taking many many financial hits already, with salaries losing ground against inflation for a decade and with reimbursements continuing to decline, and so it's not really helpful having foolhardy folks like the OP suggesting that "some say" minimum wage after maximum tuition is of import. Good doctors and adcoms don't suggest this. Missionaries and unsuccessful med school applicants may say this.
