Getting a loan from a bank would be cheaper than subscription pricing.
There are two reasons to use subscription pricing:
1) Price discrimination: You want to charge a large customer more for the same device
2) Lowering the capital expenditure by hiding the true price in operating costs
You could argue that (1) is good for small clinics, because they get access to the same machines as big clinics for a smaller cost. But I believe it's just a way to remove opportunities for competitors and results in everyone paying higher prices, even smaller clinics.
There are two reasons to use subscription pricing:
1) Price discrimination: You want to charge a large customer more for the same device
2) Lowering the capital expenditure by hiding the true price in operating costs
You could argue that (1) is good for small clinics, because they get access to the same machines as big clinics for a smaller cost. But I believe it's just a way to remove opportunities for competitors and results in everyone paying higher prices, even smaller clinics.