My understanding is that one of the major economic arguments for socialized healthcare is that paying for minor treatment/investigations/interventions asap is much, much, cheaper than waiting for things to get serious such that it has to go to emergency care where the treatment is paid for.
Well, one other point about that, of course, is that dying doesn’t just cost shitloads in terms of end of life care. It also costs your life insurance company!
So presumably it would make considerable sense for a term life insurance (dunno about whole of life) company to pay for a few select medical things. Not the esoteric or hugely expensive stuff. But simple things like blood pressure, simple diabetes, that kind of thing.
But I’ve never heard of it.
So first question: DO some life insurers offer some very limited medical coverage as part of their policy? And if not - why on earth don’t they? If they can pay a few hundred dollars to prolong someone’s life and get off the hook for hundreds of thousands of dollars, it makes massive commerical sense to be doing so…
Obvious example #1: AFAIK to be a “non smoker” for the purposes of life insurance you usually have to have not smoked for ten years. So imagine a life insurer that offers free top notch hyper aggressive non-smoking health care for any of its smoker policyholders who want it. It could save shitloads by stopping them - because the smokers would still be bound to smoking policies for the next ten years, but most of the risks would be cut down in five (AIUI).
Many term policies include the right to renew; that is, the company cannot refuse you or charge you higher than usual rates. In such cases, prolonging your life for 6 months or a year wouldn’t help.
Term life insurance is relatively cheap, and what you describe would likely drive people to the insurance companies that did not do that. Insurance companies balance their risk by selling annuities where when people die, the insurance companies make money.