5 ms·

If this isn’t a sign of the collapse, I don’t know what is.

delecti 3y ago
The federal government has been trying to sell it off for almost 30 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Helium_Reserve https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Helium_Reserve
- westcort 3y ago
  Meanwhile, patients need 6 weeks of physical therapy before they can get an MRI as a direct result of a lack of helium. Even diagnostic MRIs in which PT is not indicated. The government trying to sell a crucial asset necessary for healthcare technologies is a sign that the government is not able to take care of domestic affairs. They may have been trying to sell it before, but the lack of leadership on a critical resource like this is a bad sign.
  - EA-3167 3y ago
    > Meanwhile, patients need 6 weeks of physical therapy before they can get an MRI as a direct result of a lack of helium. Even diagnostic MRIs in which PT is not indicated. I've never heard of this, can you link to something discussing this?
    - SoftTalker 3y ago
      Due to the cost of an MRI procedure, most insurers will require 6 weeks of PT/rehab efforts on an injury before covering the cost of an MRI. I guess GP is attributing the cost of the MRI to the helium required to cool the magnet, but I'm not sure that's a big fraction of the amortized cost for a single procedure -- a reference would be good.
      - sjsdaiuasgdia 3y ago
        A counter-reference from a Jan 2023 newsletter from the Radiological Society of North America - https://www.rsna.org/news/2023/january/helium-shortage-for-mri https://www.rsna.org/news/2023/january/helium-shortage-for-m... "Despite news reports in October that the world is running out of helium, clinical MRI units throughout the U.S. were and remain unaffected." I wouldn't be surprised if some patients are given bad info by either clinic or insurer. Blaming a global shortage, real or perceived, points the patient's emotional response away from the provider.
        SoftTalker 3y ago
        At a gut level I would be inclined to agree. I've had an MRI (and had to do the prerequisite 6 weeks of PT). The MRI is a huge machine. It's in its own room, and they have to be careful about allowing any metal too close to it. The scan itself took about an hour for a couple of different views, a tech had to get my body in the right position and support it with various pads and pillows. You cannot move at all, and if you do, they have to start over. Given the time for the scan itself, plus any setup and cleaning they might have to do, I'd guess one machine could do a dozen or so scans per day. At the hospital I went to, they only did scans two days per week, I don't know if that was because they had limited staff or they need to allow for maintenance/calibration of the machine. Also I had a scan with contrast, and the doc who did the contrast injection also had limited availability. So there are real limits on the supply of MRI time, my guess is that this drives the price more than anything. It's not like an X-ray that just takes a few minutes.
      - vidarh 3y ago
        Some searches indicates most newer MRI's are "zero boil-off" machines that recondense most of the helium, and that even older, leaky MRI's might be using (losing) at most ~$20k helium per year. I'm in London, a MRI here starts at around ~250 pounds or ca. $315. Meanwhile $20k worth of helium replacement would be ~$55/day spread across all uses of the machine. So I'm inclined to think you're right. The more likely reason for the 6 week PT: Most things for which you as a patient might want an MRI for that aren't obviously not something physio will help with are things you will end up needing physio for. I'm assuming they've done a simple cost benefit analysis where the proportion of cases where they actually need MRI's are low enough that it's cheaper to just send people straight to physio first.
        SoftTalker 3y ago
        The cost of an MRI in the USA is at least 10x that number. That is why they generally require PT first. Of course if you're an athlete at the major college or professional level, you can get one immediately.
        JumpCrisscross 3y ago
        > cost of an MRI in the USA is at least 10x that number I got a whole-body MRI in New York. It was under $1,000.
        seanp2k2 3y ago
        after insurance Post the prices that your insurance provider paid to the hospital for a real comparison.
        JumpCrisscross 3y ago
        It was a voluntary whole-body MRI. This was my out of pocket expense and the provider’s revenue. No insurance.
        vidarh 3y ago
        Is that for full body scans? Prices here do vary a lot, and you certainly can end up paying 10x that price for a full body scan from an expensive provider with a bunch of extras (though judging by a couple, some of those extras are cheap/"free" (on the NHS) blood tests tacked on for no good reason other than to jack up the price). [You can get full scans for significantly less too, at least down to $1300 - I haven't looked very thoroughly -, but most people opting for full body scans are not doing so to address a specific known issue, so the prices reflect that it's a luxury service that's rarely needed, and the price lists are full of pointless upsells] If the 10x is for specific body parts, it might pay to take a short trip to do your MRI's rather than pay out of pocket where you are then.
    - Wistar 3y ago
      Although not specifically about the PT requirement, some stuff on the helium shortage across healthcare, research, and business. NBC: “The world is running out of helium. Here's why doctors are worried.” https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/helium-shortage-doctors-are-worried-running-element-threaten-mris-rcna52978 https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/helium-shortage-d... Radiological Society of North America: “Keeping An Eye on the Potential Shortage of Helium for MRIs” https://www.rsna.org/news/2023/january/helium-shortage-for-mri https://www.rsna.org/news/2023/january/helium-shortage-for-m... The Harvard Crimson: “Helium Shortage Forces Harvard Physics Labs to Shut Down Equipment, Suspend Projects” https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2022/6/24/helium-shortage-2022/ https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2022/6/24/helium-shortage... Marketplace: “Party City’s Bankruptcy partly due to high cost of helium” https://www.marketplace.org/2023/01/19/heliums-been-rising-in-price-and-its-bringing-businesses-down/ https://www.marketplace.org/2023/01/19/heliums-been-rising-i...
    - stronglikedan 3y ago
      I can't link to anything, but I can offer my own personal experience of having to pay for 6 weeks of physical therapy before they would give me an MRI for my knee. I just opted to look up the routine online and rehab myself. I'd have gladly paid my MRI copay, but I'm not paying for PT without even knowing if I need it yet.
      - trogdor 3y ago
        I use Radiology Assist for easy, self-pay imaging. You can look up the actual cost of whatever scan you are interested in, at a facility near you, on their website. A few days ago I scheduled a 3 Tesla knee MRI, on the exact day I wanted - next week. My total cost is $375, and that includes a report by a radiologist, and a copy of the MRI images. (I tore my ACL in March and opted for physical therapy instead of surgery. My knee feels like it’s at 100% and PT tests show no difference in performance between my knees. I’m interested in seeing the degree to which there has been healing, if at all. I self-paid for my initial MRI back in April as well. It would have been more expensive through insurance!)
  - abeppu 3y ago
    Doesn't this give companies that supply helium to hospitals an opportunity to purchase helium? It seems like if there's a shortage for important uses in the economy, then moving helium out of a government reserve is exactly what you'd want, right? Your complaint is that you think for-profit hospitals should be gifted the helium rather than having to purchase it?
    - toomuchtodo 3y ago
      Two issues come to mind immediately. The first is that the market might not be the most efficient mechanism for allocation for something like helium. Are party balloons more valuable than cryo coolant for particle accelerators, MRI machines, and science? Just because you can't cough up the market price doesn't mean your application isn't valuable [1]. The second is we've seen what happens with OPEC when a cartel controls the supply of energy. A for profit cornering the market for a non renewable resource could lead us to suboptimal stewardship of said resource (because humans are short sighted, near term driven, and fundamentally greedy). In 1979, in the midst of one of the many energy crisis in the 70s, the Shah of Iran said “oil is too valuable to burn." We've lucked out that we haven't run out of helium yet, but there is no guarantee we will continue to be lucky. The subcomments of this comment [2] explain the very real peril and concern. To your point "Your complaint is that you think for-profit hospitals should be gifted the helium rather than having to purchase it?", I would respond: Helium should be priced based on the end use as well as any systems in place to recover and recycle [3] [4], vs temporary use where it will quickly be vented to space, lost to us forever. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_failure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_failure [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37393338 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37393338 [3] https://www.chemistry.ucla.edu/news/new-liquid-helium-recycling-system-offers-sustainable-research/ https://www.chemistry.ucla.edu/news/new-liquid-helium-recycl... [4] https://pharmacy.ucsf.edu/news/2021/06/helium-recycling-project-sets-new-standard-sustainability-ucsf https://pharmacy.ucsf.edu/news/2021/06/helium-recycling-proj...
      - westcort 3y ago
        Exactly. Some crucial resources need to be managed with a long-term outlook or risk market failures. Helium is one such resource.
  - adolph 3y ago
    Is there a “lack of helium” or is there a competition for valuable uses of helium? MRI seems to use about 13% of annual helium production. 12,000 * 10,000 / 12.8 = 9,375,000/year [0] 1 cubic meter = 1,000 liters 9,375 (MRI) / 73,000,000 (Total production [1]) = 0.1284 At any point, an MRI machine contains about 2,000 liters of liquid helium, though suppliers need to replenish any helium that boils off. Mahesh estimates that an MRI machine uses 10,000 liters of liquid helium over its life span. (According to GE Healthcare, a manufacturer of the machines, that life span is 12.8 years.) In 2015, there were roughly 12,000 machines in the U.S., making MRIs one of the biggest helium consumers in the world, far above balloon stores. 0. https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/helium-shortage-doctors-are-worried-running-element-threaten-mris-rcna52978 https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/helium-shortage-d... Helium production in the United States totaled 73 million cubic meters in 2014. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium_production_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium_production_in_the_Unite...
  - kraig911 3y ago
    The 6 week wait isn't because of a lack of helium. It's for lack of money to fund the MRI to begin with. It's easy to point to lack of helium when really the cost of an MRI machine is expensive. The rare earth magnets alone of which are a greater scarcity than helium. My point is that it's more than just helium scarcity for not getting easy access to MRIs.
  - delecti 3y ago
    > They may have been trying to sell it before, but the lack of leadership on a critical resource like this is a bad sign. The helium reserve has been for sale for almost 30 years, hospitals have had plenty of opportunity to buy helium for their MRI machines. Your wait for an MRI isn't because of helium, it's because insurance providers want to avoid paying for things.
    - 93po 3y ago
      > Your wait for an MRI isn't because of helium, it's because insurance providers want to avoid paying for things. More accurately, it's because of corrupt or wildly misguided politicians that are against single payer healthcare due to bribery from established healthcare and insurance companies
      - delecti 3y ago
        I was talking about the more direct cause, but yes, that's the ultimate reason.
  - tssva 3y ago
    > Meanwhile, patients need 6 weeks of physical therapy before they can get an MRI as a direct result of a lack of helium. Even diagnostic MRIs in which PT is not indicated. In February my daughter started experiencing knee pain. Her doctor ordered an MRI and 1 week later the MRI was performed.
  - ska 3y ago
    > they can get an MRI as a direct result of a lack of helium. It's a ~1mm machine with ~10k of helium in it, and modern ones don't need much refill. Even with old ones it's expensive, but not out of whack with other costs. The helium market isn't really the proximal cause of not having enough MRI hours to go around, but there are concerns about it getting worse.
  - sidewndr46 3y ago
    I don't know what world you're living in but I can get an MRI next-day if I need to.
  - NoboruWataya 3y ago
    > patients need 6 weeks of physical therapy before they can get an MRI as a direct result of a lack of helium Then why hasn't the government, with its huge helium reserve, stepped in to solve this problem? Maybe there is some hope the helium could end up being sold to people who actually want to apply it to socially beneficial uses like this, since the government apparently has no interest in doing so?
- anigbrowl 3y ago
  Factions within the government have been trying to sell it off for that time. Other factions don't feel like wasting political capital defending this hill because they can't easily explain the issue to the public.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
zadler 3y ago
[flagged]
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
gnatman 3y ago
Collapse of what exactly?
- riffic 3y ago
  in their context, everything.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

The federal government has been trying to sell it off for almost 30 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Helium_Reserve https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Helium_Reserve

westcort 3y ago
Meanwhile, patients need 6 weeks of physical therapy before they can get an MRI as a direct result of a lack of helium. Even diagnostic MRIs in which PT is not indicated. The government trying to sell a crucial asset necessary for healthcare technologies is a sign that the government is not able to take care of domestic affairs. They may have been trying to sell it before, but the lack of leadership on a critical resource like this is a bad sign.
- EA-3167 3y ago
  > Meanwhile, patients need 6 weeks of physical therapy before they can get an MRI as a direct result of a lack of helium. Even diagnostic MRIs in which PT is not indicated. I've never heard of this, can you link to something discussing this?
  - SoftTalker 3y ago
    Due to the cost of an MRI procedure, most insurers will require 6 weeks of PT/rehab efforts on an injury before covering the cost of an MRI. I guess GP is attributing the cost of the MRI to the helium required to cool the magnet, but I'm not sure that's a big fraction of the amortized cost for a single procedure -- a reference would be good.
    - sjsdaiuasgdia 3y ago
      A counter-reference from a Jan 2023 newsletter from the Radiological Society of North America - https://www.rsna.org/news/2023/january/helium-shortage-for-mri https://www.rsna.org/news/2023/january/helium-shortage-for-m... "Despite news reports in October that the world is running out of helium, clinical MRI units throughout the U.S. were and remain unaffected." I wouldn't be surprised if some patients are given bad info by either clinic or insurer. Blaming a global shortage, real or perceived, points the patient's emotional response away from the provider.
      - SoftTalker 3y ago
        At a gut level I would be inclined to agree. I've had an MRI (and had to do the prerequisite 6 weeks of PT). The MRI is a huge machine. It's in its own room, and they have to be careful about allowing any metal too close to it. The scan itself took about an hour for a couple of different views, a tech had to get my body in the right position and support it with various pads and pillows. You cannot move at all, and if you do, they have to start over. Given the time for the scan itself, plus any setup and cleaning they might have to do, I'd guess one machine could do a dozen or so scans per day. At the hospital I went to, they only did scans two days per week, I don't know if that was because they had limited staff or they need to allow for maintenance/calibration of the machine. Also I had a scan with contrast, and the doc who did the contrast injection also had limited availability. So there are real limits on the supply of MRI time, my guess is that this drives the price more than anything. It's not like an X-ray that just takes a few minutes.
    - vidarh 3y ago
      Some searches indicates most newer MRI's are "zero boil-off" machines that recondense most of the helium, and that even older, leaky MRI's might be using (losing) at most ~$20k helium per year. I'm in London, a MRI here starts at around ~250 pounds or ca. $315. Meanwhile $20k worth of helium replacement would be ~$55/day spread across all uses of the machine. So I'm inclined to think you're right. The more likely reason for the 6 week PT: Most things for which you as a patient might want an MRI for that aren't obviously not something physio will help with are things you will end up needing physio for. I'm assuming they've done a simple cost benefit analysis where the proportion of cases where they actually need MRI's are low enough that it's cheaper to just send people straight to physio first.
      - SoftTalker 3y ago
        The cost of an MRI in the USA is at least 10x that number. That is why they generally require PT first. Of course if you're an athlete at the major college or professional level, you can get one immediately.
        JumpCrisscross 3y ago
        > cost of an MRI in the USA is at least 10x that number I got a whole-body MRI in New York. It was under $1,000.
        seanp2k2 3y ago
        after insurance Post the prices that your insurance provider paid to the hospital for a real comparison.
        JumpCrisscross 3y ago
        It was a voluntary whole-body MRI. This was my out of pocket expense and the provider’s revenue. No insurance.
        vidarh 3y ago
        Is that for full body scans? Prices here do vary a lot, and you certainly can end up paying 10x that price for a full body scan from an expensive provider with a bunch of extras (though judging by a couple, some of those extras are cheap/"free" (on the NHS) blood tests tacked on for no good reason other than to jack up the price). [You can get full scans for significantly less too, at least down to $1300 - I haven't looked very thoroughly -, but most people opting for full body scans are not doing so to address a specific known issue, so the prices reflect that it's a luxury service that's rarely needed, and the price lists are full of pointless upsells] If the 10x is for specific body parts, it might pay to take a short trip to do your MRI's rather than pay out of pocket where you are then.
  - Wistar 3y ago
    Although not specifically about the PT requirement, some stuff on the helium shortage across healthcare, research, and business. NBC: “The world is running out of helium. Here's why doctors are worried.” https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/helium-shortage-doctors-are-worried-running-element-threaten-mris-rcna52978 https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/helium-shortage-d... Radiological Society of North America: “Keeping An Eye on the Potential Shortage of Helium for MRIs” https://www.rsna.org/news/2023/january/helium-shortage-for-mri https://www.rsna.org/news/2023/january/helium-shortage-for-m... The Harvard Crimson: “Helium Shortage Forces Harvard Physics Labs to Shut Down Equipment, Suspend Projects” https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2022/6/24/helium-shortage-2022/ https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2022/6/24/helium-shortage... Marketplace: “Party City’s Bankruptcy partly due to high cost of helium” https://www.marketplace.org/2023/01/19/heliums-been-rising-in-price-and-its-bringing-businesses-down/ https://www.marketplace.org/2023/01/19/heliums-been-rising-i...
  - stronglikedan 3y ago
    I can't link to anything, but I can offer my own personal experience of having to pay for 6 weeks of physical therapy before they would give me an MRI for my knee. I just opted to look up the routine online and rehab myself. I'd have gladly paid my MRI copay, but I'm not paying for PT without even knowing if I need it yet.
    - trogdor 3y ago
      I use Radiology Assist for easy, self-pay imaging. You can look up the actual cost of whatever scan you are interested in, at a facility near you, on their website. A few days ago I scheduled a 3 Tesla knee MRI, on the exact day I wanted - next week. My total cost is $375, and that includes a report by a radiologist, and a copy of the MRI images. (I tore my ACL in March and opted for physical therapy instead of surgery. My knee feels like it’s at 100% and PT tests show no difference in performance between my knees. I’m interested in seeing the degree to which there has been healing, if at all. I self-paid for my initial MRI back in April as well. It would have been more expensive through insurance!)
- abeppu 3y ago
  Doesn't this give companies that supply helium to hospitals an opportunity to purchase helium? It seems like if there's a shortage for important uses in the economy, then moving helium out of a government reserve is exactly what you'd want, right? Your complaint is that you think for-profit hospitals should be gifted the helium rather than having to purchase it?
  - toomuchtodo 3y ago
    Two issues come to mind immediately. The first is that the market might not be the most efficient mechanism for allocation for something like helium. Are party balloons more valuable than cryo coolant for particle accelerators, MRI machines, and science? Just because you can't cough up the market price doesn't mean your application isn't valuable [1]. The second is we've seen what happens with OPEC when a cartel controls the supply of energy. A for profit cornering the market for a non renewable resource could lead us to suboptimal stewardship of said resource (because humans are short sighted, near term driven, and fundamentally greedy). In 1979, in the midst of one of the many energy crisis in the 70s, the Shah of Iran said “oil is too valuable to burn." We've lucked out that we haven't run out of helium yet, but there is no guarantee we will continue to be lucky. The subcomments of this comment [2] explain the very real peril and concern. To your point "Your complaint is that you think for-profit hospitals should be gifted the helium rather than having to purchase it?", I would respond: Helium should be priced based on the end use as well as any systems in place to recover and recycle [3] [4], vs temporary use where it will quickly be vented to space, lost to us forever. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_failure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_failure [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37393338 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37393338 [3] https://www.chemistry.ucla.edu/news/new-liquid-helium-recycling-system-offers-sustainable-research/ https://www.chemistry.ucla.edu/news/new-liquid-helium-recycl... [4] https://pharmacy.ucsf.edu/news/2021/06/helium-recycling-project-sets-new-standard-sustainability-ucsf https://pharmacy.ucsf.edu/news/2021/06/helium-recycling-proj...
    - westcort 3y ago
      Exactly. Some crucial resources need to be managed with a long-term outlook or risk market failures. Helium is one such resource.
- adolph 3y ago
  Is there a “lack of helium” or is there a competition for valuable uses of helium? MRI seems to use about 13% of annual helium production. 12,000 * 10,000 / 12.8 = 9,375,000/year [0] 1 cubic meter = 1,000 liters 9,375 (MRI) / 73,000,000 (Total production [1]) = 0.1284 At any point, an MRI machine contains about 2,000 liters of liquid helium, though suppliers need to replenish any helium that boils off. Mahesh estimates that an MRI machine uses 10,000 liters of liquid helium over its life span. (According to GE Healthcare, a manufacturer of the machines, that life span is 12.8 years.) In 2015, there were roughly 12,000 machines in the U.S., making MRIs one of the biggest helium consumers in the world, far above balloon stores. 0. https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/helium-shortage-doctors-are-worried-running-element-threaten-mris-rcna52978 https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/helium-shortage-d... Helium production in the United States totaled 73 million cubic meters in 2014. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium_production_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium_production_in_the_Unite...
- kraig911 3y ago
  The 6 week wait isn't because of a lack of helium. It's for lack of money to fund the MRI to begin with. It's easy to point to lack of helium when really the cost of an MRI machine is expensive. The rare earth magnets alone of which are a greater scarcity than helium. My point is that it's more than just helium scarcity for not getting easy access to MRIs.
- delecti 3y ago
  > They may have been trying to sell it before, but the lack of leadership on a critical resource like this is a bad sign. The helium reserve has been for sale for almost 30 years, hospitals have had plenty of opportunity to buy helium for their MRI machines. Your wait for an MRI isn't because of helium, it's because insurance providers want to avoid paying for things.
  - 93po 3y ago
    > Your wait for an MRI isn't because of helium, it's because insurance providers want to avoid paying for things. More accurately, it's because of corrupt or wildly misguided politicians that are against single payer healthcare due to bribery from established healthcare and insurance companies
    - delecti 3y ago
      I was talking about the more direct cause, but yes, that's the ultimate reason.
- tssva 3y ago
  > Meanwhile, patients need 6 weeks of physical therapy before they can get an MRI as a direct result of a lack of helium. Even diagnostic MRIs in which PT is not indicated. In February my daughter started experiencing knee pain. Her doctor ordered an MRI and 1 week later the MRI was performed.
- ska 3y ago
  > they can get an MRI as a direct result of a lack of helium. It's a ~1mm machine with ~10k of helium in it, and modern ones don't need much refill. Even with old ones it's expensive, but not out of whack with other costs. The helium market isn't really the proximal cause of not having enough MRI hours to go around, but there are concerns about it getting worse.
- sidewndr46 3y ago
  I don't know what world you're living in but I can get an MRI next-day if I need to.
- NoboruWataya 3y ago
  > patients need 6 weeks of physical therapy before they can get an MRI as a direct result of a lack of helium Then why hasn't the government, with its huge helium reserve, stepped in to solve this problem? Maybe there is some hope the helium could end up being sold to people who actually want to apply it to socially beneficial uses like this, since the government apparently has no interest in doing so?
anigbrowl 3y ago
Factions within the government have been trying to sell it off for that time. Other factions don't feel like wasting political capital defending this hill because they can't easily explain the issue to the public.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

zadler 3y ago

[flagged]

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

gnatman 3y ago

Collapse of what exactly?

riffic 3y ago
in their context, everything.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]