You will find that a lot of the GA airfields in the US are publicly owned and funded by the taxpayer, thus are freely available for use by any old Joe for nothing.
Such a system does not exist in the UK, since GA is not as widely used in the UK on a day to day basis and there would be an uproar if our taxes were used to fund something seen as a luxury available to only a select few.
As such all our airfield are privately owned and need to charge premium prices to stay open!