[throwway120385]

What are you saying? That because I can take steps to avoid getting a cold that I should just avoid getting a cold and insurance should not pay out on it? That's a big stretch considering you can literally get diseases from mosquitos and wild animals.

You're making a bald assertion that "insurance has no business paying out for you going in for strep throat or the flu or an annual checkup." Imagine, for a moment, that you run an insurance company, and you have a lot of people who need knee surgery or hip replacements or spinal surgery or who have triple bypasses or COPD or name any chronic or acute disease that requires expensive treatment.

Think about how many of those people wouldn't need that treatment if they went to the doctor every year. If your company had to pay out for treatment on every single one of those cases, wouldn't it be smart to spend a small amount every year to try to prevent people from becoming one of those serious cases?

What are the "market forces" that you cite here? Is this another one of those magical invisible hand arguments? Have you considered that insurance companies offering these yearly physicals is a result of some market force where business-people figured out that it was cheaper to do that then let peoples' minor problems blow up into major problems and then pay out on that instead?