Mostly, IMO, because they're not free markets. Healthcare actively fights price transparency, and is largely driven by fixed demand and artificially constrained supply. College costs can only do what they do because the whole thing is financed by grants and uniquely binding loans pushed on students who barely understand what they're getting into. If we could force the whole thing into an actual free market, it'd vastly improve the situation.
Just because you are not paying for it doesn't mean it has zero costs. If you're not paying for it, someone else is, the ROI burden gets shifted to the society as a whole, which is much, much worse than the burden being on an individual.
Is it better for society to get a decent education for a low cost, for society as a whole? It seems to work for Sweden, and many other European countries. [4]
[1] https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helårsstudent_och_helårspresta...
[2] https://sfs.mit.edu/undergraduate-students/the-cost-of-atten...
[3] https://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/world-un...
Ah yes, "qualifies".
How many citizens "qualify"?
The number of people who qualify is decided by two people - the person allocating money and the person running the education system.
The person allocating the money says "I'll give you {amount}". The person running the education system says "{amount} will let us educate {number}".
Nah, they say "I'll give you {amount} to educate {number}", and then the educator tries to do as much as possible with the resources they got. There is no negotiation about either {amount} or {number}, other than trying to argue that amount or number needs to be changed because quality or industry wants more/less.
In such a system, it's typical that one bureaucracy decides what "qualify" means.
And another decides what "educate" means.
Commercial healthcare and education seem to really bring about the worst aspects of a market economy, in some countries. Not sure where it works well, it maybe somewhere.