Health insurance companies lose money if you become healthier
Health Insurance companies get a % of the medical bill, Smaller bill ==> reduced income
"Under the ACA's 80/20 rule, an insurer's allowed profit is a fixed share of premiums, and premiums track medical spending. So over time, a smaller total medical bill shrinks the profit pool. Insurers that also own clinics and pharmacy benefit managers are paid even more directly by larger bills." Claude AI - Oct 2026
Why Don’t Health Insurers Promote a Healthier Diet? - Sept 2026
Many of the diseases “that cause a constant drain on health care budgets can be prevented by nutrition;” so, why aren’t the big payors getting involved? Even a 1% decline in excess body fat could alone save tens of billions in medical costs. You’d think at least the health insurance industry would try to get people to eat more healthfully to try to pay out less money.
Well, one could say “the insurance industry benefits from high health care costs because these rising costs are simply passed on to both individuals and employers in terms of higher premiums and insurers take a fixed percentage of these premiums as increasing profits.”
They get a piece of the pie; so, the bigger the pie—the unhealthier everyone is—the bigger their piece. “As such, insurers have not done as much as they could to help reduce health care costs because lower costs would hurt their bottom line.”
Unfortunately: US Health insurance companies, Hospitals, Doctors, etc. lose income if a person becomes healthier
