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It makes sense for insurance to incentivize preventative care (e.g. by paying for it or requiring it), since it reduces future large claims. Otherwise it can be

• godelski 7y ago
  I wouldn't say our insurance system even remotely promotes preventive care. My insurance plan gives me one official a year and to teeth cleaning. That physical does not cover even basic testing that the doctor may want to do (this is ridiculous for people with family histories of problems). While I'd say this is better than just seeing a doctor when you're not okay, I wouldn't really call this preventive or actively incentivising people on the plan to get preventive treatment or testing (other than those things are already cheaper, but that's by the nature of the disease/problem not because the insurance is doing anything to incentivize this behavior)
• perl4ever 7y ago
  "It makes sense for insurance to incentivize preventative care (e.g. by paying for it or requiring it), since it reduces future large claims." This is a popular thing to say, but the trouble with the logic is that the cost of preventative care, albeit small, is multiplied by everybody, while the cost of the large claims is multiplied by a small fraction of everybody. So whether it is actually profitable to prevent problems is very sensitive to the cost of the prevention, and the likelihood of the consequences without prevention. I think a lot of people are familiar with the scene in the movie Fight Club where the guy is talking about the cost-benefit equation for initiating an automotive recall. If prevention was automatically profitable, then that scene couldn't exist or make sense.