You do realize you're arguing against not-free healthcare and calling it free healthcare then?
I'm arguing against calling healthcare free in any way shape or form.
In my world, you can get things for free (at least on a monetary front, which I'll reserve myself to here) if you do not have to pay for it. The power I get from my solar panels is free - I do not pay anyone for these kilowatts. The wood I gather from my land is free - I did not pay anyone the material. The bus ride I take downtown is free - I do not pay anyone when I get on or off, and I can ride a hundred times without even a penny disappearing from my wallet.
Just so we're clear, here's how I see your world.
You paid to have those solar panels built and possibly installed. Or you paid for the materials that made them. Someone was paid to make it or was paid to get the materials. You pay to buy an axe to cut down wood. The soil paid to grow that tree, in the form of nutrients it gave up. That city bus runs on gas which the city pays for and taxes you and all citizens to provide, not to mention the salary of the bus driver, the cost of printing the bus route slips, the cost of the bus itself and the cost of the people that sit around at the bus station office.
Obviously all of these things had costs involved in setting up the system where I obtain them for free - personal costs, even.
That being my point.
But those costs are fixed and sunk, and irrelevant to calculating the cost of any of these events themselves. They are all free - but only available if I've paid the cost to create and maintain the system that provides them.
Are those costs really fixed and sunk though? The price of gasoline alone in my town, along with some zealous budget cutting, slashed about half the bus lines in my town. Drivers got laid off. Schedules got longer. Fares went up (per ride and yearly. Maybe university students with their year-long bus pass didn't pay anymore...or maybe that was a few dollars more in their ever-increasing yearly tuition.) All over the price of gasoline. And bottom line, you
paid into the system to get something back. Is that truly free? To take a different example, we sacrifice many freedoms as Americans to the system so we get freedoms guaranteed. Are we really free or have we just negotiated a different set of circumstances for ourselves that other nations have not?
To me free is almost always a loaded term, even though I use it in passing plenty. But when someone tries to offer me something for free, I can't help but think about all the costs and processes behind it. Even when I get a second-hand monitor from a friend as an upgrade, I think about what he paid for it originally, and the supply chain that led up to it. Or how about a more topical example. Think about Foxconn and then listen to the commercials for cellphone carriers that offer a brand spankin' new, FREE iPhone when you sign up for a plan.
Everything costs something, and when we're talking about something of the scope and importance of nationalized healthcare....it is a thing to view with our eyes wide open to the costs involved.