“These days it sometimes seems like a foregone conclusion that we’re going to have socialized healthcare in this country. This is quite a tragedy to contemplate. America, for all its militarism and prisons, has had one sector where there has remained more room for freedom and less for bureaucratic power than can be seen in other Western nations: the healthcare industry. Some of these nations are much less cruel to foreigners and much less draconian with prisoners and outcasts, including those guilty only of victimless crimes. But there are some ways in which America still scores some major libertarian points over Canada and Sweden, and one of the most significant is that the US has not nationalized its healthcare sector. … The conservatives have for decades rightly warned about socialized healthcare in America. It was a big goal of the communists, then the socialists, then the social democrats. Now it seems like a centrist policy goal.” (01/31/07)