"Free" = tax-paid. They don't say in order to make it seem as if you weren't working and paying for it anyway. The aim is to make health care universally available, not to augment state power.
As a portuguese Citizen (a country in Europe), i don't understand the American health system. Here, we have a national health service. If we have to go to the hospital, we go to the hospital without worrying about receiving a bill. How do americans live with the fact that there..