What a shock, people who are given free stuff use it more (and more carelessly) than people who have to pay for it!
I have a friend with “free” coverage - if her kids hiccup she is in there checking it out. We use Liberty Health Share so we pay for all our doctor visits. We use all other ways to get better before deciding we need a doctor, because it costs us money. (But once we spend X amount for the year, everything else is covered 100% from ANY MEDICAL PROFESSIONAL).
This economic model is Soooooooo easy to explain.
Supposing your govt gave you a card that allowed you to get filet mignon for free. Well, why ever have chicken for dinner? Make filet every night! Eventually your store can’t afford these free giveaways, even if the govt gives them some token coins each time. It goes to China and gets this meat that is “labeled” filet (it’s probably chunks cut from prisoners’ sawed off limbs) and sells that. Not so much fun to buy, but, hey, it’s free.
You want another one? Tesla is forced to give away free cars to those who have government exchange cards. Sure, the first few guys get great new models. But Tesla can’t afford this for long! So they start putting together a Model FR for the free exchanges. It’s mostly made with tin, aluminum, and gorilla glue. But hey, it’s a free tesla, so people still get them... For a while....
In California as of Jan, doctors who choose to treat medi-Cal patients only get $20 reimbursed per office visit. That is not sustainable. A plumber makes $75 just for showing up. So doctors don’t take medi-cal patients because they need food on the table at their homes! So then the medi-cal patients ( ONE THIRD OF THE STATE POPULATION!!!) have no medical care except in the ER for free. Which was why Obama started this whole thing. Because poor [illegal] patients were forced to use the ER for basic services. WHICH NOW THEY HAVE TO AGAIN.
Most of these policies are far less cost effective for the majority of consumers than their predecessors. Whatever they are, they aren’t “free stuff” especially when looking at multi thousand dollar deductibles.