[throwawayqqq11]

Isnt it a little onesided to put blame on the payers for price insensitivity?

> The second you detach the consumer from the price of something, that is when they stop caring about how much something costs, and so the price jumps.

Why should nobody care about prices? The customer gets subsidizes by another payer, in this case governments that have to authorize budgets.

The reverse could be true too, companies raise their prices in lock step because they want to 'detach' more profits off of production and so, the government steps in to subsidize. So what is the causality chain here? Still the government not caring?

IMO you are putting blame onesidedly on payers and not on the ones in charge of price policy, which would include companies too. I dont understand why people dont apply their critizism of large organisations, like a government, to other large organisations, like a company.

[simianwords]

Companies are incentivised to keep costs low and the feedback loop for this incentive is much smaller. What I mean by feedback loop is: the cost of running the company directly affects the stake-holders in a meaningful way. The CEO is probably has stock options and has to hit a target so that they can be paid well. To do so they need to be more sensitive with prices or shareholders or the board will be on the CEO’s behind. There is a direct monetary incentive relation here.

There is one for the government too but the feedback loop is much bigger. If some one in the government makes a suboptimal decision, what incentives exist to penalise them?