The problem is not in this specific case (those insurance companies won't go bankrupt), but with the system. When you don't have a proper administration you can't really cooperate as effectively as with proper administration. This is the symptom, not the problem.

Imaging the price of less cooperation - when taken to the extreme the insurance company won't accept to insure people trekking there. The price will go up. This will hurt both the industry and the trekkers.

Proper administration > profit

The article does talk about guides deliberately adding stuff to people's food to make them sick. It goes a bit beyond that.

This is mostly trekking related evacuation, which is far easy and lower impact. EBC is about 100x cheaper overall per person than summit attempts, if not 500x.

And Sagarmartha national park and the whole valley up to EBC is an amazingly beautiful part of the world.

The "Everest Economy" is worth around $500 million annually.

to be fair, the approach is usually covered in snowpack for most of the year, so impact is minimal by foot traffic. However, most of the protection is fixed, which could have lasting effects if something were to rip out.

For other mountains with dry summits in the summers, I would agree: the effects of erosion are frightening