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Notes -
$300k in debt isn't that huge when the median physician pay is $350k - at 6% interest and 40% taxes it drops your take-home from $210k to $192k.
The much larger cost for doctors is the opportunity cost of going to medical school and one or more residencies. The median doctor graduates from medical school at age 30 and then still has years of residency(ies) to go. Making peanuts for a decade+ after college for the types of driven/conscientious/smart people who go to medical school is an enormous opportunity cost, dwarfing the literal debt (e.g. discount rate of 5%, forgone earnings of $100k per year, for 10 years = $1.26m at the end.
It's not really an "enormous financial risk". The 6-year graduation rate from medical school is 96%, and virtually all of them find a residency. That is, an admission offer from a medical school is as close to a "golden ticket" as you can get in life. The only risk is whatever time you invest in getting in to medical school beyond undergrad - a risk that, for most people, is 0-4 years.
Finally, re people being underwater. This can happen, but it usually stems from specific decisions - i.e. spending many years trying to get into medical school, switching specialties late in the game, refusing to give up on a very selective specialty, choosing to do academic medicine in a high cost-of-living area, etc.
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