America's Socialized Medicine system

One wouldn't know it from the health care debate last year but the United States has had a huge government run and payed for health system for decades.  The Veterans Administration Hospitals are the largest single hospital system in the United States.   According to a Fortune magazine article (May 11, 2006) the VA provides some of the best quality care in the United States at a cost of about $5000 per patient, whereas the private system the rest of us deal with costs about $6300 per patient per year.  So our wonderful "free market" medical care system is about 20% more expensive than the government financed and run bureaucracy and the bureaucracy also provides top quality care.

Remind me again why we "solved" the problem of people without health insurance with "mandates" that people buy private health insurance?