An astute HOTLINE reader sent this chart showing that the real explosion in health care spending started when LBJ and his Great Society enacted Medicare and Medicaid in the mid-1960s. These federal programs grew in cost at three to four times the rate of growth of the rest of the economy.

Prior to the federal intervention in the health insurance market health costs grew at about the overall rate of the economy.

The program’s payroll tax also snatched money out of worker paychecks, and so real after-tax wages started to stagnate. Obamacare started in 2016 and that only put coals on the fire of already red hot health care inflation.

The moral of the story: the more the federal government intervenes in the health care markets, the more expensive health care becomes.