I used to own a laundromat back in the 1970s. When we bought it, the driers were equipped with timers but not coin mechanisms; IOW the dry was free, a common come-on in those days. These driers were the big laundromat type with the round glass door which can easily dry 2 or 3 washer-loads at once.
Some other laundromats charged for dries, a dime being the common price. Coin mechanisms were $200/ea, so the time to payback on a retrofit was long, considering the dime also had to pay for maintenance and heat.
When natural gas prices spiked (sound familiar?), our costs exploded & we began losing money. Gotta do something.
I spent a day at the 'mat watching the folks. They’d start 3 driers up while their 1 load of wash was spinning. When the washer stopped, they’d divide one washer-load into their three nice hot driers and the clothes would be dry in 10 minutes. Then they’d take them out, close the drier doors and the timer would keep them running another 20 minutes, empty.
No WONDER we were getting killed. They were using 6 to 9 times as much gas as we expected.
We bought coin mechanisms the next day, set the charge to a nickel, which still didin’t quite cover the cost of gas, much less anything else.
Result: Our gas consumption dropped 70% while the take from the washers (ie # of washes) didn’t budge.
The coin mechanisms paid for themselves in 40 days considering the gas & the nickels and in 42 days just considering the gas. We could have thrown the nickels away and it would still have been a superb investment.
Moral of the story: The demand for a free product is all-but infinite, and the demand for an almost-free product is MUCH closer to the true demand.
In the medical business you have the moral issue that for me, about $50 is the co-pay that’d make me avoid a nuisance trip to the doctor, but for my janitor it might be more like $5. Capitalism is like that.
(For the nostalgia buffs, a wash at our place cost 25 cents. So you could wash & dry 3 moderate loads for 80 cents if you used the driers correctly.)