There are alot of things people just feel they have to do :
http://www.toughguy.co.uk/ For those who feel they just have to enter a 7 mile race in the dead of winter which includes jumping off a diving board into 20 feet of freezing water (sometimes they have to break the ice so people can jump in),crawling through Viet Cong tunnels, leaping flaming pits and running through hanging electric cattle prods. You have to be a bit nuts to do some things.
"worth it" is a very nebulous question.
I am not a resident for a few more weeks, so are you asking if medical school was worth it. I am a IMG, so maybe if I went to Harvard, Hopkins or the like I would have driven around with my morterboard tassle hanging off my rearview mirror. However the average MD I have seen is simply good at memorizing long lists of junk, often without a real understanding of what they are memorizing. I think a doctorate in theoretical mathematics or something is much more impressive than an MD from the best medical schools.
Is it worth the money? I have made 6 figures a number of years of my life (>$100K, <$200K) but was working less than 30 hours a week. I am heading for FP residency in a few weeks. I am not sure what I will think making $150K working as a FP.
Is it intrinsically worth it because of the service you provide? I think there are specialties like trauma surgery or interventional cardiology, in which there is little doubt you helped the patient. However, prescribed medication deaths would be the #3 cause of death if you put it on the top 10 causes of death in the USA, pushing AIDS deaths completely off the list (its number 10). Few FP's (or IM's) really are saving anyones life. Most are seeing people with STD's, depression, constipation, sinus infections, allergies, insomnia and the like - for which they usually prescribe drugs - which sometimes have adverse effects like death. Trauma surgery and interventional cardiology aside, if we are talking medicine; then no - probably kill as many as you save (the rest just get better due to the bodies own intrinsic healing abilities, in other words get better despite the MD).
Then you have specialties like radiology. which about half the time seem to be just a service other specialties use to absorb malpractice risk - most of the people I rotated with read their own xrays, MRI's and ultrasounds - without even a look at the radiologist report or else just glancing at it. I think the most memorable to me was rotating in pulmonology, my preceptor went to look at recent films - which were still in the resident radiologists office, my preceptor asked his opinion - the radiologist said the brain MRI looked normal - my preceptor took the films out and looked at them himself, pointed to a coccidiomycosis valley fever lesion ( spread to the brain - patient was on Enteracept) and said "never trust the radiologist, always read your own films".
So for primary care, unless the PCP is really pushing lifestyle changes - exercise, diet, etc (which have proven effects on health with few adverse reactions); and using very low risk treatments before jumping to the prescription pad than no, probably not worth it. The PCP should be evaluating a the diet and making appropriate changes, before prescribing for things like IBS and constipation. For many other specialities like radiology, in a limited sense (other than absorbing malpractice risk) kinda sorta worth it (of real intrinsic value).
But you just have to do some things. In 1988 I made a lifetime "to-do" list : be in 5 movies, climb Mt.Kilomanjaro, earn a 5th degree black belt, earn an MD, etc etc etc. People are just compelled to do some things for various reasons : they feel driven to do it, they are too deep in debt, etc. But for many of them you just have to be a bit nuts.
