I sure wished that were the case, 'cept the housing exits from a notch in the body, a fixed location, and literally no amount of compression of the housing is likely to impose so tight of a radius on it's own. Surely the housing would creep out of the lever body overnight if it had been stuffed in with sufficient force, since the housing is like a strong spring when curved sharply. I have to admit though that some installations seemed to work better than others (noting that some installations used drilled holes in the handlebar to straighten the housing's path!).
The lever design was essentially defective imo, until they updated to the rigidly-mounted ferrule.
In defense of the 1st-gen levers, I suppose they were a pioneering design, though DiaCompe surely had enough experience with lined housing by that time to know that the housing was the better location for the cable to angle sharply instead of where it exits the ferrule.
Worse problems with cables changing direction emerged around the same time in the mtb arena, where some bike's stems routed the cable through the welded, tubular stem across a too-small roller. I used to replace frayed and broken cables with predictable regularity on bikes with that sort of cable routing.
Thankfully today's component makers are more detail-oriented with cable routing.