Thank you everyone for your replies. I understand that financial aid in the form of direct loans will (almost) always be available, but I wanted to know about need based scholarships.
For example, Yale University SOM Financial Aid FAQ has the following question:
"Some students graduate with upwards of $200,000 in debt, while others end up only $90,800 in debt because they received scholarship aid. Is it possible to set some sort of "debt cap" to make things more equitable?"
And the abbreviated answer is:
"There are three reasons that some students graduate with higher debt... The second reason is that some parents choose not to provide some or all of their contribution. If the family is affluent and the expected contribution is high, the student would need to borrow additional loans to cover the parent contribution..."
My family does not plan to contribute any money for medical school but they make around ~300K. Even at a school like Yale, which is known for being extremely generous, will I find myself in 200K+ of loans? Or do my parents not make "enough" to completely disqualify me from getting any sort of need-based scholarship? How affluent is affluent?