It doesn’t seem useful to me to talk about nominal values when discussing value of money over long periods of time. The original comment was that insurance charges more than they payout, which was disputed saying they make up for it in investment earnings.

What I’m saying is that since the same investment earnings are available to the premium payer, it is true that the insurance company charges more than they pay out, hence the original poster is right in avoiding insurance whenever they can (i.e. they can afford to pay for a loss they might have been planning on purchasing insurance for). All they need to do is invest it in one of the many nearly free index funds, and they’re in the same boat as the insurance company, but without having to pay for the salaries of the insurance company’s employees.