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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An **additional reason** most other answers here omit is medical equipment sold to western doctors and hospitals and other wealthy customers and when products are sold to the wealthy those customers are able to pay higher prices and have high standards.
Doctors and hospitals earn what they earn because when you need their services you need their services. For example what will you not pay to save your life or the life of a loved one?
Use of medical services can be high without making the population overall healthier / longer living so in places that have government run healthcare attempts are made to contain the cost of healthcare by limiting the supply and forcing triage — hence waiting times can be long.
When healthcare is not run by government waiting times can be short but the high costs of healthcare gets passed on to you as high insurance premiums and large medical bills if you fail to purchase medical insurance.
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