This complexity affects hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies, payments, and added business costs, which in turn creates incentives for private actors to interpret ambiguity in their own favor. The system is also captured by special interests, which harness government power to their own ends. All this results in commands that lack moral legitimacy, and this naturally breeds resistance and efforts at avoidance and even outright evasion. The government is reacting to these tensions in simplistic fashion. Mistakes and disagreements are assumed to be malicious, not a result of human error or legitimate difference of opinion.
Prosecutors work to eliminate intent and knowledge as elements of regulatory offenses.
Everyone is presumed to know the law, even if a requirement is unsettled or buried in obscure guidance letters. Mistakes of fact, honest efforts to comply, and even misleading government interpretations are not defenses. Matters that should be hashed out as contract disputes are turned into criminal cases. The medical system is hit particularly hard when disputes over the allocation of indirect overhead under arcane principles of cost accounting get escalated into criminal fraud. Punishment of trivia is increasing.