Where’s the mystery? You subsidize something, you get more of it. Hence the utter failure of the 60-year “War on Poverty” and the welfare state.
~~~
It’s also the reason healthcare costs are so absurd.
If they had never started to socialize healthcare so many decades ago, costs would have stayed manageable for lower and middle income people to afford purely out of simple economic forces.
“ It’s also the reason healthcare costs are so absurd.”
Healthcare as we know it changed dramatically as a a result of wage and price controls instituted by the morons in Congress.
When they fixed wages, many companies added health insurance in order to attract and retain employees. This decoupled the doctor from the patient. Once that happened patients cared less about and were even unaware of what healthcare costs. As a result, people would use more healthcare than before because they were spending other people’s money. Add in laws that require hospitals to take care of anyone, regardless of ability to pay, along with illegal immigration which increased the number of non-payers and hospitals are forced to charge more to those who can pay to cover what’s given to people who can’t pay.
Per usual, supposedly well meaning but functionally moronic politicians broke things.
A great example is boob jobs and lasik eye surgery. Both cosmetic (not paid for by insurance), and the prices have actually dropped over the years due to competition. Like the market is supposed to work.