As an MD, I can say that the prereqs do provide a foundation on which medical school education is based, but it doesn't have to be that way. Most schools are going to only 1.5 years of basic science curriculum before tossing the students into the clinical clerkships, and it helps to have learned a lot of these basic science topics earlier as an undergrad, so that you're just layering additional understanding and depth.
But just to push back a little bit, and maybe bring this discussion back to the topic of this thread a little more, I think that we need to be arguing for greater, broader, more liberalized education all around. I'm shooting from the hip here a little, but I feel very uneasy with the logic of the recent decades, arguing for a strictly utilitarian view of education as simply a tool to turn out workers for our companies. I don't think it's a coincidence that you're seeing the rise of anti-education anti-science anti-intellectual movements at the same time that we see moves to reduce education, especially secondary and undergraduate, to a lowest common denominator. So in parallel, you might say why do physicians need to understand the physical sciences, in depth genetics, or even philosophy and literature? And I'd say that as society gets wealthier and more productive, that liberalizing the education of all for just the primary benefit that that brings to society, irregardless of whether it connects directly to the tasks that someone will perform at a job, becomes easier to accommodate and even emphasize.
Also, in regards to physics, please don't forget that radiology and radiation oncology require direct understanding of many of these principles. It's covered later in their residency, but still can be argued as a necessary prereq for at least a subset of physicians.