The Acton Institute has an intriguing video argument against the nationalization of the health-care industry. Although clearly aimed at ObamaCare, the video takes a more philosophical approach to the entire notion of socialized medicine, or socialized anything.  It also reminds us why the term “nanny state” gets used to describe Western democracies with socialized medicine, and it’s not for the day care centers:

This can also get cast as elitism — the notion that people can’t act in their own best interests, and need a small cadre of Really Smart People^TM to tell them how to live their lives.  In essence, socialist systems treat people like children, not as free people capable of making decisions for themselves.  In order to sell that kind of treatment, though, advocates will convince people that they’re victims rather than children, but in the end these systems take away their choices and force them to take orders on their most personal of choices.

Either way, it’s a disaster, both in terms of delivering service and for personal freedom and civil liberties.  Unfortunately, as the Acton video informs us, once we’ve surrendered all of that for socialism, it’s extremely difficult to reverse it later.  Let’s hope we make the right decisions now.