Verizon can get away with this because unlike in other parts of the world, the carriers are set up in such a way that you can't take your equipment and go somewhere else if you're not happy. If you want to take advantage of the VZW network, you have to put up with their pricing policies because phones are incompatible.

When VZW changes pricing in recent years, they never do it in a way that will cost you less. When they introduced family data sharing they deliberately priced in a way that would not save money for most customers and over time would likely cost more as people use more data.  

Now they offering customers a chance to pay back the subsidy they aren't getting anymore while also paying for a new phone. Until we have phones that support all LTE bands, we are all locked in and screwed!