Why do they say “it costs the hospital to use the machine” when the hospital owns the machine?

Question

It always confused me. A hospital has an MRI or some other machine, and you hear they try to use it as little as possible to cut costs, because it costs them this or that amount per usage. But why would that be if they own it?

In: 379

Answer 1

For comparison, one can get an MRI done in South East Asia for $150 and that includes a Radiologist interpretation. The machines used are from GE, Siemens etc, similar to the machines found in the US but likely not the latest model.

Granted the cost of labor, insurance, liability etc are multiples more in the US than SE Asia. I still wonder if if that justifies the cost of doing MRI here.