It costs the fully loaded headcount cost of all admin staff at the doctor's office divided by the number of transactions the office undertakes in a year. It's still probably not that high, but it's not as simple as saying "filling out a form only costs $1.20 in billable time".

FYI, the actual cost of the average MRI is ~200$. Everything else is just padding.

Let's take an example of how these low costs work. In Denver, where I live, if you get an MRI of your neck region it's $1,200, and the doctor we visited in Japan says he gets $98 for an MRI. So how do you do that?

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/sickaroundtheworld/i...

Anyway, the idea it's just one person filling out a form is a mistake. It requires time from the patent, a doctor, the doctors admin staff, and the insurance company's staff.