[burrows]

What does the word “free” mean here?

I assume the clinical professionals are paid and the researchers were paid and the pharma venders are paid, so that money is coming from somewhere. Is it that someone other than you pays for it?

[nautilius]

It's pretty clear what 'free' means here, the person getting the treatment is not billed for the treatment. In that way, a society organizes that no one has the existential threat (financially or medically) of prohibitively high cost.

It's so obvious that I don't understand how people still see it as this elevating 'gotcha' moment. It's the same when you drink free beer, breath free air, enjoy free time, etc: obviously it doesn't just appear from nothingness but has (opportunity) cost.

[burrows]

> It's pretty clear what 'free' means here, the person getting the treatment is not billed for the treatment.

Actually I think that’s a pretty good example of what confuses me about this usage of “free”. Usually when I call something “free” I am making a claim about who pays for the thing, but as you pointed out, in this case it has something to do with who is billed by the service provider.

> In that way, a society organizes that no one has the existential threat (financially or medically) of prohibitively high cost.

IMO, no current Earth society comes close to that criteria. For example, if someone has a currently untreatable disease, then isn’t that just saying the cost of treatment is prohibitively high? ie, the cost of hiring scientists, renting lab space, running trials, etc.

[nautilius]

> in this case it has something to do with who is billed by the service provider.

What else could it even be? You started your gotcha with the truism that it's not free, so, yeah, nothing is free, and the whole discussion is meaningless. You're arguing in bad faith, but that just makes your argument meaningless.

> no current Earth society comes close to that criteria. For example, if someone has a currently untreatable disease

Your counterargument is that there exist diseases that cannot be treated anywhere?

Let me give you an example of something treatable: Endemic (flea-borne_) typhus. In Europe, the given example is "British POWs in Germany at the end of World War I when they described conditions in Germany." [1] In the US, instead Typhus shows up in the reports of the LA Medical Association as a regular occurence (among homeless, mostly). [2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epidemic_typhus [2] https://www.ladocs.org/news-events/news/lac-dph-health-alert...

[burrows]

> What else could it even be?

As I said, my usage is closer to calling a thing “free” if I consume it without paying for it, and importantly it doesn’t matter who receives the bill.

If my wife buys a new couch for our home with a credit card that is nominally her’s, but for which I make the payments, I would not call the couch free despite the credit card bill being in her name.

> You started your gotcha with the truism that it's not free, so, yeah, nothing is free, and the whole discussion is meaningless. You're arguing in bad faith, but that just makes your argument meaningless.

I just asked a question about the meaning of “free” in this context.

> Your counterargument is that there exist diseases that cannot be treated anywhere?

My counterexample to the claim, “There are current Earth societies where no one is unable to get treatment because of insufficient funds”, is anyone in these candidate societies with a currently untreatable disease.

I don’t understand your point about typhus.

[nautilius]

> As I said, my usage is closer to calling a thing “free” if I consume it without paying for it, and importantly it doesn’t matter who receives the bill.

Well then that's exactly, word for word, what OP did. How are you confused if you use it the exact same way?

[burrows]

But I think OP does pay for it, as she suggests here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30788837

First OP says, “X is free for me.”, then she says, “My taxes pay for X.” It looks to me that says she both does and does not pay for it, that’s why I’m confused.

[DiggyJohnson]

I agree with much of what you said, but I don’t think they’re arguing in bad faith at all.

[nautilius]

I only see two options, bad faith or childishly naive, so I suggested the more flattering option. In either case it's tiring to argue this 'gotcha' strawman - no one here on HN believes that things just materialize.

But I do think it's bad faith, because I doubt burrows picks the same kind of pointless argument about semantics when someone offers him a free sample at Costco, or a free beer, or is confused when reading the Washington Post online, even though it says 'Post' right there in the name, and that the printed New York Times doesn't really tell you the time, and that Fox News is not about foxes at all (even though it absolutely should be).

[DiggyJohnson]

Yes, but there is a long history of thinking about the various definitions for "free". This alone warrants the discussion. Surely they see what you mean, but it does sound like you both default to different definitions of the word. I agree with you, but I maintain that you are being much to certain about the naivety of the objection.

Because we're on HN:

There's 'free' as in beer ...

And there's 'free' as in 'freedom'.

[aabceh]

Do you also get confused by free food tastings in grocery stores?

[nautilius]

Yes. And when buying hot dogs.

[royjacobs]

Certainly. It's being paid for by the universal basic health care that our government provides. One of the reasons we pay taxes.

[burrows]

Okay, you give the government money (taxes) and then the government pays the clinics for your medical care (with the tax money).

But doesn’t that mean you’re still paying for your own medical care with the government acting as a middle-man? So then it’s not free.

[kwhitefoot]

You are missing the key feature: solidarity.

It is not paying for your own medical care it is paying a small proportion of everyone's medical care.

And in fact for a proportion of the population it is in fact free or nearly so because they have never paid any income tax or the cost was so high that the taxes they did pay plus the proceeds of selling very possession they had and selling their children into servitude still wasn't enough to pay for it.

And lastly, we all understand the point of taxation and redistribution (at least in Europe we do) so what exactly was the point you were repeatedly failing to make clear?

[burrows]

> And in fact for a proportion of the population it is in fact free or nearly so because they have never paid any income tax or the cost was so high that the taxes they did pay plus the proceeds of selling very possession they had and selling their children into servitude still wasn't enough to pay for it.

Okay, so if the person receiving the service doesn’t pay taxes, then they do not pay for the service. And for everyone else that does pay taxes, it is a cost with no attendant service.

> we all understand the point of taxation and redistribution (at least in Europe we do)

What is the point?

> what exactly was the point you were repeatedly failing to make clear?

I don’t have some huge point. I’m just confused by this usage of “free”. There are other usages that I find confusing as well.

A child tells his friends that everything on Amazon is free, meanwhile his parents silently pay for his purchases.

Someone steals a car and tells her friends that she has a new free car.

[nautilius]

Wait until you hear about insurances, where it is perfectly normal (in fact the whole point) that the vast majority of people pay in more than they get back.

[burrows]

I generally don’t refer to a repair subsidized by my car insurance as free. Do you?

[droopyEyelids]

Do you feel like this was an insightful point that needed clarification?

[royjacobs]

Sure, if for some reason you want to take the most absolute, most pedantic definition of the word 'free' and you are utterly confused by it meaning something else then, yes, it is not free.

I hope this clears things up for you.