Even if it were $250, that's a pretty high cost relative to the annual cost of insurance. It's too high to justify as a routine diagnostic tool. The financial benefit here is that earlier identification would save money in the long term treatment. MRIs don't cure cancer, so the direct benefit only applies to the limited savings on a very small subset of people of the people who actually get cancers that could be identified earlier.
The real benefits are indirect (from the viewpoint of the insurance people who unfortunately pay for it)- quality of life is much better if you catch it earlier, and the medical research benefits are huge.
Realistically, it's also not $250 even outside the US- not for the resolution needed to diagnose cancers. That's below the depreciation cost of a high end (say $1M) machine. 12 scans a day (it takes roughly an hour for an average scan, 12 is per day per machine is pretty average[1]) 7 days a week for 10 years is 43,800 scans. So ignoring interest, labor, and absolutely everything else that's $228 per scan.
A full body MRI takes an hour only for small patients. More realistically 1.5-2 hours.
The real benefits are indirect (from the viewpoint of the insurance people who unfortunately pay for it)- quality of life is much better if you catch it earlier, and the medical research benefits are huge.
Realistically, it's also not $250 even outside the US- not for the resolution needed to diagnose cancers. That's below the depreciation cost of a high end (say $1M) machine. 12 scans a day (it takes roughly an hour for an average scan, 12 is per day per machine is pretty average[1]) 7 days a week for 10 years is 43,800 scans. So ignoring interest, labor, and absolutely everything else that's $228 per scan.
A full body MRI takes an hour only for small patients. More realistically 1.5-2 hours.
[1]: https://www.auntminnie.com/index.aspx?sec=ser&sub=def&pag=di...