It's true that the investment does need to be recouped for purchasing future machines, but once you have one, it's a sunk cost.
And even then, if it's a big $5M machine [0] that lasts 10 years [1], and we generously assume it takes 1 hour per patient [2] and runs 12 hours a day, 300 days a year [3], the cost can be recouped if each test costs $140.
But an MRI bill easily costs 20 times the cost to recoup the investment.
[0]: They're usually $1-3M, and extremity scanners (hands, feet etc.) can be under $500k.
[1]: The average age of an MRI machine is ~11 years, i.e. they typically last 22 years
[2]: Most procedures take less than half an hour of scan time, but there's some shuffle and overhead
[3]: Medicine does not run on banker's hours
Or more... $2800 would be a cheap MRI in some places... $4K+ I've seen quoted.
It's also no coincidence that companies target physicians to form "imaging cooperatives" where they finance MRI/CT/PET offering recoupment times of a year or less...
and completely by chance have higher by a Std Dev or more ordering of imaging in their private practice...
It's hard, however ethical you are, to not err on the side of sending someone to imaging when you profit linearly off of said imaging.
Yup. Then it comes down to capacity - how many scans you can do a day vs. how many people need the diagnostic vs. how many people could use the diagnostic.
