That can't be the explanation because it wasn't present in the US before the government was running huge deficits either.

As in, the US still doesn’t have it.

Hence the propensity to sink growing amounts of GDP into paying an ever-heightening stack of middlemen to provide medical care at market prices... instead of simplifying the stack and saving money.

The US government created a mandate, then allowed it to metastasize as health care became more technical and expensive, and is now in the business of sticking its fingers in its ears and pretending there’s not a financial problem.

https://www.cms.gov/data-research/statistics-trends-and-repo...

Everyone in that spending pipeline is doing it[1], not just the US government.

[1] https://siderea.dreamwidth.org/1179450.html (very long; you’ll need to get to at least part 2 to see the relevance)