To build on your second-order point, under Obamacare, health insurers get to keep a certain percentage of premiums based on what treatments costs but would have

To build on your second-order point, under Obamacare, health insurers get to keep a certain percentage of premiums based on what treatments costs but would have to refund the rest. So, it is in the financial interest of insurance companies for medical interventions to be expensive and recurring. I found this surprising, because, like the poster you are replying to, it does make sense at a first-order level that insurance companies would make more profits if they paid out less for a specific individual's health issue. But the second order effect of skimming a percentage of total costs probably dominates here. And of course, for-profit medical care systems and individual doctors also generally have no financial incentive to contain costs.