@Rhode-Shore
I agree with you. I couldn’t really find any evidence that UMKC charged exorbitant tuition- at least when I looked at tuition for colleges with no OOS bias. Some of the DO school tuitions are even higher(which may be your ONLY option after gap years if you didn’t manage to get into an allopathic med school).
I am also not very convinced that a 4 year degree as a pre-requisite somehow makes you a better doctor or med student when that 4 year degree could have much less science content than a 2 year community college for another graduate program like pharmacy (example a pre-med student going for an undergrad in English or Humanities and take just the pre-requisite for med school which is Basic PCB, Organic Chem and BioChem). Except Organic and Biochem, rest are really AP course level content or may be slightly higher. Many countries cover organic chem in highschool itself.
Following is the UMKC phramcy pre-reqs that is more or less same as med school pre-reqs (I am surprised to see that pharmacy school has mandatory requirements around anatomy, microbiology, cell biology etc. that are not in the pre-reqs for most med schools). Almost all pre-reqs can be taken in a local community college for free.