> Technically it's a drain on society's safety nets.
The solution to this is to replace safety nets with transfer payments. Don't provide people with healthcare, provide them with money with which they can buy healthcare or insurance. This also stops the subsidy from ratcheting up the cost of the thing, because if you can drive 30 minutes out of your way to save a thousand dollars you do it, but if the government is paying either way then you don't.
And then if people want to buy less safe cars, insurance carriers will charge them higher premiums.
> Also, the other argument goes that "people don't know how to actually get what they want for themselves, and will act against their own true self-interests".
This is nothing more than paternalism and has proved wrong time and again. It turns out that on average people understand their own situation better than far away generalist policymakers, even before you add in lobbyist influence.
Which isn't to say that an individual will never make a mistake. But legislators make mistakes at scale. Whereas if you want to get individuals to change their behavior in a way that genuinely benefits them, all you have to do is tell them about it, not punish them if they hear you out and still want to do something else.