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Here's some quotes from The Pennsylvania Gazette about the current state of care recieved from 'socialized medicine'.

PVAMC has developed an expertise in treating and providing services to patients who are homeless or have spent time living on the street. In April, the VA Central Office announced that it was establishing a National Center on Homelessness among Veterans at PVAMC. It will be a joint initiative with a VA medical center in Tampa, Florida; Penn and the University of South Florida will provide support. While the VA has provided extensive outreach and case management for homeless veterans across the country since 1987, this will be its first initiative to conduct research and develop policy on the issue.

The Philadelphia region has one of the highest concentrations of veterans in the country, with close to 330,000 in the city and six surrounding counties. Of those, more than 94,000 are enrolled at PVAMC, a nearly 30 percent penetration rate that is especially impressive because not all veterans are eligible for coverage. (Enrollment criteria include financial and medical need, military record, and whether or not a disability is service-related.) A number of government and civic leaders have proposed expanding eligibility to help address our nation's current health care and economic issues. They say this is particularly important now, given the high percentage of military personnel from low-income backgrounds, compared with the draft era.

In 2004, Congress granted all Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans five years of free health care following active duty. The Philadelphia VA now has almost 2,200 vets from those conflicts enrolled, a 47 percent increase from 2006. It expects the numbers to increase even more this year, with the planned return of many Pennsylvania and New Jersey National Guard units.

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One of the goals of offering Iraq and Afghanistan veterans free health care is to help them avoid some of the health problems now faced by aging Vietnam vets by starting them on a lifetime of preventive care. The VA is considered one of the most accomplished primary-care providers in the country. Its electronic health-records system is often cited as a model for facilitating comprehensive continuity of care across locations and over time. Physicians know when to remind patients about screening tests and can easily access data from previous tests, an advantage not lost on trainees. "It's more navigable and almost seamless," says Dr. Judd Flesch C'01 M'06, a third-year resident, describing the benefits of using one system to order, conduct, report, and evaluate medical tests. As residents make their rounds, they frequently stop at a computer to check a patient's medical history.

The electronic health-records system dates back more than 20 years, arising from the need to serve a large, mobile patient population, and it gives Penn researchers access to essential longitudinal data that they say they could not get elsewhere.

"You can't do outcomes research without a strong retrospective data base," says Dr. Glen Gaulton, executive vice dean and chief scientific officer for the School of Medicine, who notes that the relationship with PVAMC benefits Penn research in numerous ways. It provides Penn with "access to a distinctive patient population" that supports its work in areas such as mental health and geriatrics. Penn physicians are directly involved in the Philadelphia VA's special programs on Parkinson's disease, mental illness, and other conditions. This has given Penn a "head start" in preparing to treat our nation's aging population, says Gaulton, and it is now "ahead of the curve because we had to address it."