We had our first child ~3 months ago. We had a room to ourselves and nurses/midwifes would only come in once or twice a day unless they were paged (which we did, they were a godsend). This made the stay as comfortable as could be, and we could get all the quiet time alone we wanted, although sleep was in short supply for other reasons.
This was in Copenhagen, Denmark, so the entire stay was free. Sadly, the central hospital is removing this practice and kicking out patients after 4 hours.
Similar situation in Finland; we had a baby over Christmas two years ago. We spent a few days in a private room with a checkup on the baby/mother around noon and 6pm.
We paid €250 or so for 3 or 4 days (genuinely can't remember I guess my sleeping wasn't so great. Oops!) for the three of us, so it wasn't free, but it was pretty cheap.
Is it free to walk down the sidewalk in your country? Under your definition it's not, since ultimately taxes likely paid for that sidewalk, but I think most people would describe it as free.
That's a little different in as much as there's negligible marginal cost to walking down the sidewalk, once it is constructed. The same is not true of a marginal hospital stay.
Subsidization is when the costs of a product or service are hidden from you (Universal healthcare, a supplier takes you out to lunch, an employer pays for a worker cafeteria)
Free is when there are no costs (watching a sunrise, receiving a hug)
Depends on if you think in purely capitalistic terms (most but not all Americans) or not (again, most Europeans). I mean one way to think about it is the sidewalk is exploitable by businesses as a potential source of revenue for people who want to ride electric scooters (and other businesses that directly grow the economy) and they can pay lobbyists who drive the engine of American economic growth (lol), whereas you as a pedestrian is hardly doing an activity on that sidewalk that directly contributes to economic growth, so yeah, in a way you are getting your walk down the “free” sidewalk subsidized.
Walking on the way to the bank, to get a loan, to start a business qualifies as economic activity.
As does going to the store, and a whole bunch of other things.
The USA built the Interstate Highway System for exactly the reason of economic growth. The ideas behind it are no different from the ones that justified sidewalks.
Should any small town evaluate their sidewalk projects, like we have the Interestate Highway Project, assuming they have the records and they probably don't, they would find those sidewalks probably returned a couple times their cost already, and will continue to deliver that, easily funding their upkeep.
(something we seem to have forgotten about roads, which has allowed tolls to encroach on and marginalize said growth and value)
This was in Copenhagen, Denmark, so the entire stay was free. Sadly, the central hospital is removing this practice and kicking out patients after 4 hours.