The Crony Thinking Behind Heritage Support of Nationalized Healthcare

A friend emails:

In the middle 1980s, I was invited to a private briefing at Heritage. It was
to hear an Australian  MP urge American conservatives and libertarians not
to make the "mistake" that their compatriots in the UK and Oz had by
opposing nationalized medicine. It could, he said, be structured to be good
for businesses (that is, though he didn't use the words, be fascist instead
of socialist), and it would be extremely popular with the plebs. It was also
inevitable, so we might as well take the credit, and deny it to the left.