why can’t we get a yearly full body MRI to scan for cancers?

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I’ve seen so many horror stories where someone gets sick or is in pain, thinking they know what’s causing it only to find out they have late stage cancer. I don’t understand…..wouldn’t insurance companies want to offer this like they would a free yearly physical as it would be cheaper for them than paying out cancer treatments? Wouldn’t doctors want to push they’re patients to have this service done?

In: Biology

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Anonymous 0 Comments

Availabilitymoneytime.

I live in a city of about 150,000 people. There’s 1 hospital.

A yearly full body MRI for everyone would be amazing, but that’s an extra 400 full body MRI’s **per day** for the hospital to do. It’s already operating near max capacity now, doing a fraction of that. All on people that very specifically need one!

You’d need to build, equip, staff, and operate like 5 more MRI units the size.of the one we’ve got, just for everyone’s precautionary scans. That’s a ton of money, equipment, and expertise to spend on scans that are mostly coming back finding nothing.

Basically: even if your region *did* have the budget to triple their total healthcare spending, 10s of thousands of MRIs is not the best way they could spend it on healthcare.

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