I realize that there are huge costs for those companies that manufacture medical equipment in the first place, especially in R&D activities. However, what determines a different price between, for example, an MRI machine (that can cost $3 million) and a Mammography machine (around $50k)?
These prices come from a quick Google search and may, therefore, have to be contextualized.
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The answer isn’t always cut-and-dry, as companies will charge as much as they believe they can. So if you have a unique, patented product, it will be more expensive even if the technology and manufacturing isn’t expensive. Remember that the market isn’t big either, and they want to make a yearly profit. So they charge accordingly. And the hospital doesn’t have much choice, there’s only a few of these manufacturers out there.
But in the specific example of mammogram vs. MRI, it really is simple.
A mammogram is just a specialist x-ray. Century old technology. Well understood technology, relatively easy to make.
An MRI is a high tech machine that uses liquid helium cooled superconducting magnets to measure magnetic fields of individual atoms. It’s just so much more difficult to build, and the materials themselves are magnitudes more expensive.
It’s like comparing a Spitfire to an F35. Yeah, they’re both TECHNICALLY just fighter planes.
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