You seem to believe regen is not compensated in loot. If you believe that then your logic makes sense. Otherwise...
There are two totally different algorithms.
Quantity wise (TT value) regen may or may not be compensated (I still think it isn't, but I have no strong evidence for this so I may very well be wrong).
Quality wise (optimal loot, which I translate in 'higher rarity loot') you want an as low as possible cost to kill (without any other factors considered) and here nothing is compensated... is basically a DPS race.
The thing about healing is clearly mentioned only in the optimal loot (quality wise) section.
On a more general view, I read the whole loot 2.0 as:
Step 1: Loot value is determined (TT value) and here pretty much everything is compensated (they mentioned ammo, decay, healing costs, armor costs, etc), maybe not entirely, but still quite a bit, with a small (maximum 7%) boost to the high-efficiency weapons. So having higher kill costs is not necessarily so bad in this regard.
Imagine something like (obviously oversimplified): loot_return = kill_costs * (92.5 + efficiency/10)%, resuling in 92.5% return rate at 0% efficiency and 99.5% return rate at 100% efficiency.
Step 2: Once the loot value is determined, determining the loot composition follows, and the lower the cost to kill, the more rare loot you'll get. And here it matters if you're minimizing your costs or not.
That post clearly states exactly that... minimizing costs to kill moved from affecting loot quantity (in 1.0) to affecting loot quality (in 2.0):
Let's see if I understood the question correctly.
There is no separate added "punishment" for not using a maxed weapon. The downside of using non-maxed weapons is still just a consequence of not doing the full damage potential and missing a few extra shots.
Using weapons that you do not have maxed skills for now has a considerably smaller negative impact on the "loot value" than it did in the past. Not dealing the full potential damage with each shot used to negatively affect the "loot value" returns greatly but now primarily negatively affect the "loot composition". For the "skill misses" (not evades) these still do affect your "loot value" returns negatively as they did in the past.
However as stated in the Dev notes #11
"A special hunting bonus pool will be implemented that will distribute funds from various sources, including skill misses, PVP, marketing and special events, which will improve overall loot returns for all participants." So the decay and ammo usage generated by missed attacks can sometimes find its way back to you.
With that said MindArk still always recommend using maxed out equipment for better results but the downside to not doing so is now smaller than before.
So by not minimizing your costs (aka overprotecting with armor, in-combat healing or whatever you can think at) you won't (necessarily) get (much) lower return rates, but you will just get more shrapnel / common loot and less rare loot (items).