Need a bit of advice

Evening all,

Brief summary first. Basically, I'm currently studying for my ASs in Spanish, Maths w) Further, Biology and Chemistry in which I'm predicted 5As. I will be dropping Spanish at the end of this year, and would hope to achieve A* A* A(A(further maths)). After that I need a little help.

My career hope is to lead a healthy and fulfilled life either in the UK or abroad working in the healthcare/medicinal sector. I want to be able to gain a strong income but also have time to continue playing sport and generally enjoying life I'm thinking of studying Biochemistry or Biochemical Engineering, with the view to possibly doing a post-graduate medicine course. Also, this option will help me avoid the added pressures of the BMAT/UKCAT and hard study in my first years at uni.
Because of this, and a few other personal preferences, I'm thinking of applying to the US, namely Harvard, MIT and UC Berkeley especially. From what I've researched, I think the US option would be preferably as almost all medicinal courses over there are following an undergraduate degree, which may or may not be in the field. However, I do have a few questions;

1) How much would the Biochemistry or Biochemical Engineering degree be worth if I decided I didn't want to do the following medicine degree? Would it be enough to obtain a strong job in the field?

2) If I do study medicine in the US, does that qualification stand globally, or would I have to re-qualify myself if I wanted to work abroad? (and vice versa, does the UK medicine degree stand globally?

Thanks,
Rob

(PS: This is sort of an updated post of one I wrote circa 7 months ago, hello to anyone who remembers me!)

PSS: I received a warning regarding double posting this - please note I am only posting it here as its very relevant here, and will get a lot more traffic than in the other sub-forum