Full Body MRI at 71: Why I Am Paying Cash for It

The short version: I’m paying $3,099 cash for a two-hour full body MRI with no symptoms, because insurance doesn’t cover screening scans for healthy people. I chose First Look MRI’s top Diamond package for one reason: it adds an MRA of the brain, which images the blood vessels and can find an aneurysm, a problem that usually gives no warning until it’s too late.

On September 24 I am going to slide into an MRI tube for a little over two hours. Nobody ordered it. No doctor told me I needed it. My insurance will not pay a dime, and the place I am using does not even take insurance.

So why am I doing it?

What Insurance Actually Covers, and Why This Is Not It

Insurance pays for imaging when there is a problem to investigate. Pain, a lump, an abnormal test, something that gives the scan a target. That is a diagnostic MRI, and it looks at one region.

What I am getting is a screening MRI on a healthy person with no symptoms. There is no billing code for that in the United States. No insurer covers it, medical societies do not recommend it, and there is no appeal that changes the answer. I looked into it. The honest conclusion was that if I wanted this scan, I was going to buy it myself.

So I am buying it myself.

Where I Am Going

I am using First Look MRI in Fort Worth, Texas. No referral, no insurance, published prices on the website before you ever pick up the phone.

I booked the Diamond package, their top tier — 130 minutes in the machine, $3,099 out of my own pocket. It covers full MRIs from head to pelvis, a whole spine screening, an MRA of the brain to rule out an aneurysm, and body composition with liver fat analysis. The two cheaper tiers, Gold at $2,099 and Platinum at $2,499, drop the brain MRA and the body comp.

I went with the top tier for one reason: the brain.

All three packages image the brain itself, because they all run head to pelvis. What the Diamond adds is an MRA of the brain — magnetic resonance angiography, which images the blood vessels rather than the tissue. A standard MRI shows you the brain. An MRA shows you the plumbing feeding it.

That is the difference I was willing to pay for. An aneurysm sits in a vessel wall, gives no symptoms whatsoever, and the first sign that it exists is usually the one that kills you. A brain MRI is not reliably going to find it. An MRA is the test that looks. At 71, with a brain I am trying to keep sharp for another century, spending an extra six hundred dollars to have someone actually look at the vessels was not a hard decision.

The body composition and liver fat analysis came along with it. Those are nice to have and I will report them, but they are not why I booked this tier.

The question I get asked most when I mention this is about the tube. Two hours and ten minutes is a long time to lie still inside a machine, and for a lot of people my age that is the whole objection. I do not have a problem with enclosed spaces, so for me it is boredom, not dread. If you do have a problem with them, that is a real conversation to have with the imaging center before you book, not after.

Every package includes a written report and, the part that sold me on this place, a video report where the radiologist walks through your own images and explains what he is looking at in plain English.

That last piece matters more than it sounds. I have had scans before where I got a page of radiology language and a shrug. Having a doctor talk me through my own anatomy is worth real money to me.

Why I Am Doing It Anyway

Three reasons, and I will give them to you straight.

The first is that I do not want to find cancer late. I am 71. That is the age where the odds stop being theoretical. Most of what kills people my age is something that grew quietly for years before anyone went looking. A kidney tumor, a liver lesion, a brain aneurysm — these do not announce themselves. They are found by accident, or they are found too late.

The second is that this whole project runs on measurement. I test my blood twice a year. I had my whole genome sequenced. I track my blood pressure, my HRV, my sleep and my biological age. Every one of those tells me something about how my body is running. None of them tell me what is physically inside me right now. This is the only test that looks.

The third is that I would rather know. Some people genuinely would not, and I understand that. But I am running a 129-year experiment on myself in public. Not looking is not an option I am comfortable with.

Why I Am Doing It Now

I did not wake up one morning and decide this on my own. It came out of conversations.

This year I interviewed Aubrey de Grey, who runs the LEV Foundation and gave us the idea of longevity escape velocity, and Richard Rossi, who runs the DaVinci 50 longevity group I belong to. Different men, different backgrounds, same advice when the subject turned to what an individual should actually do: get a baseline. Measure yourself thoroughly while you are well, so that when something changes you have something real to compare it against.

That is the argument that moved me. Not fear of what is in there. The fact that a scan at 71 while I feel fine is worth far more than the same scan at 75 in a panic, because the one taken today becomes the reference point for every one after it.

There is one more piece of my own history worth stating. My mother had colon cancer and skin cancer. That is the only cancer anywhere in my family, on either side, and my whole genome screening came back clean for the inherited variants that would put me in a high-risk surveillance program. So I am not walking in here carrying a loaded family history. But one first-degree relative with colon cancer is not nothing either, and I would rather act on it than file it away.

Worth being precise about what that means: a family history of colon cancer is an argument for a colonoscopy, not for an MRI. MRI does not read the colon well, and this scan is not a substitute for one. I get a colonoscopy every five years and have never had an issue, so that base is covered by the right test. The MRI is asking a different question of a different part of me.

I feel good. Nothing hurts. No doctor has told me to worry about anything. That is exactly the condition you want to be in when you get your first look.

The Case Against It, Stated Honestly

I would be doing you a disservice if I only gave you my side.

The research does not support whole body MRI as routine screening for healthy people, and I am not going to pretend otherwise. A 2026 meta-analysis in European Radiology pooled ten studies covering 9,024 asymptomatic people and found a cancer detection rate of 1.57 percent. That is not nothing, but it is low.

The bigger problem is what else the scan finds. A systematic review in the Journal of Magnetic Resonance Imaging found that among asymptomatic people scanned, the pooled proportion of false positive findings was 16 percent. Cysts, bulges, spots and shadows that look alarming on a report and turn out to be nothing.

But “nothing” costs something. A finding of unclear significance leads to a follow-up scan, then a specialist visit, sometimes a biopsy. That cascade is billed through insurance, so the scan itself may be the cheapest part. And the worry between the report and the all-clear is real.

I am going in with my eyes open on that. If something comes back indeterminate, I have already decided I will chase it down rather than sit with it.

How This Fits Everything Else I Track

This is not a one-off stunt. It is the imaging piece of a picture I have been building for years.

My Function Health bloodwork tells me how my systems are running. My whole genome results tell me what I was dealt. The MRI tells me what is actually there today. Three different questions, three different tests.

What Happens Next

The scan is on September 24. I will publish what they find. All of it — the boring parts, the things I did not want to see, and what it cost me out of pocket.

If the scan is clean, that is a data point worth having at 71. If it is not, then paying for it myself will have been the best money I ever spent.

Either way, you get the numbers.

Want to see the rest of what I do? Here is my full protocol list, my fitness routine, and every biomarker I track.

Live long and prosper,

Gary

A note from Gary: I am not a doctor, and I am definitely not your doctor. I am a 71-year-old running a 129-year experiment on myself and publishing the results as they come. Talk to your physician before changing anything about your own health.