Additional diagnostics can also be very expensive. Articles like this don’t seem to understand the overall costs to a health system with decisions like these. And that cost eventually does go down into the pockets of patients one way or another.
I think the point of the conversation is that if we take the predatory capitalism out of the way, using MRIs could potentially be a net benefit overall for everyone.
I'd argue that malpractice risk has at least as much negative influence on a physicians judgment.
It's perceived as much less (medico-legally) risky to "do something" (or more often "refer the patient to someone else to do something") than not do something.
OECD data (most recent available, around 2020–2022): MRI units per 100K population: United States ~3.6, Canada ~1.0, United Kingdom ~0.7
I would argue that getting "predatory capitalism" out of the way has sharply curtailed MRI availability where that's been tried. Maybe we should loosen the leash on capitalism a bit to get better care...
