It isn't about ownership. It's about control.

If you can control every action of an industry; wages, prices, hiring practices, construction, product design, benefits, where you can build, how you can build, where you can mine or drill, what ingredients you can use in foods, everything down to how big the holes in Swiss cheese are, or big the toilet stalls in your factory are, it really doesn't matter a hill of beans whose name is on the pink slip.

This control increases every year.

If you can force a car company to do what you want, to build the cars you want them to build with standards, mandates, regulations, quotas and penalties, do you have to own the car company to call the shots?

Modern "progressives" don't care about who "owns" the means of production. They care about power over it.

National health insurance is a state monopoly on the provision of medical care. The providers work for the government. You could probably say the same for industries that only do defense work, too, even if they have stockholders.

A government with a moral mandate to nationalize health care has a moral mandate to nationalize a lot of things. Where do "critical necessities" stop? Food? Shelter? Clothing? Transportation?

I'm constantly told health care is "too important" to leave to the private sector. A lot of things could be so defined.