This is so absurd to me. The expression
"prevention is better than cure" isn't just folk wisdom, in just about any country with nationalized healthcare the studies also confirm that this costs less money. The only exception I ever heard was a Dutch study in the 2000s suggesting that people growing older due to smoking less was going to increase healthcare costs, because people were getting older putting pressure on the pension system, but let's not peer further into
that can of worms.
So by all accounts it should be cheaper for for-profit insurance companies too, unless they have ways to externalize the costs onto the rest of society. Which I guess is more circumstantial evidence for how messed up the system must be.
