"To find a better health-care model, we don’t have to turn our gaze north, in the usual direction, to Canada, or across the pond to the UK and other European countries, or even limit ourselves to calling for “Medicare for all.” Eight million of us already have something better than Medicare and more akin to the UK’s National Health Service, right here, in America—with the private-insurance industry almost completely eliminated from the equation. The real question we need to ask was posed just last month by an obviously impressed UK physician, during an NHS study visit to the VHA in West Haven: “Why,” he wondered out loud, “do you have to be a veteran to get this level of care in America? Why isn’t it available to all Americans?” Why indeed. "

http://prospect.org/article/why-veterans-health-system-better-you-think