See if you can spot the contradiction in this passage from an article by The Associated Press:
“Getting an AIDS test at the drugstore could become as common as a flu shot or blood pressure check, if a new pilot program takes off. The $1.2 million program will offer the free rapid HIV tests at pharmacies and in-store clinics in 24 cities and rural communities, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced … .”
Don’t feel too bad if the inconsistency isn’t readily apparent to you. It’s a subtle kind of thing — and that is exactly the problem.
Through the decades-long failure of families and schools to teach basic economics and the fundamentals of logic, we have come to the point at which we do not think twice when someone refers to tests funded by mounds of tax dollars as “free.”
But they are free, someone will protest. The person who gets the test doesn’t have to pay for it, so it’s free, right?