Possibly all of the above.

An MRI shouldn't cost $26k, even with contrast, and at a hospital.

If this was non-emergency, it should have been pre-cleared with insurance per their policy.

I’m an MR tech.

You could fly to New Zealand, have a scan on a state of the art machine, get a good report, have 3 weeks holiday and fly home. You’d have heaps of money left over.

$26k for a contrast MRI is outrageous. An MRI machine costs $1m at the high end. If you figure the procedure takes 2h and the machine runs 22h/day - which they tend to do - they're making over a quarter of the cost of the machine daily. It doesn't cost anywhere near that to run it; even if we're talking maintenance, salaries, and utilities.