The US government is broadly disallowed, for political reasons, from doing anything. So they have to buy services on the open market, where they get charged through the nose.

Our state legislature recently voted down adding a new Data Analyst position to one of their departments. That department cannot function without that position, so instead it has to use it's funding to buy that same position from a 3rd party contractor for 3x the price or more.

The result is that we pay more than anyone else for basically everything we do.