THE REPORTS OF squalor and neglect uncovered at Walter Reed Army Medical Center have been vivid -- wounded soldiers, often crippled, heavily medicated, or brain-damaged, left to fend for themselves throughout the sprawling, overcrowded facility, in rooms with mouse droppings, cockroaches, and moldy, crumbling walls.

But what has given an extra edge to the outrage has been the suspicion that Walter Reed is not the exception but the rule, the most galling symbol of a badly broken system...

As the indignation has mounted, not only the military hospital system -- Walter Reed is an Army hospital -- but the Veterans Health Administration has come under attack. The VA healthcare system -- an entirely separate and far larger network of hospitals and clinics run by a civilian agency, the US Department of Veterans Affairs -- has for years been a target of conservatives. A government-operated, single-payer system with 5 million patients, it is the closest thing this country has to socialized medicine...

By many measures, VA hospitals and clinics are in fact the best in the country, and they achieve these results while spending 25 percent less per patient than Medicare. Recent studies from the Rand Corporation, the New England Journal of Medicine, and the National Committee for Quality Assurance, a healthcare watchdog organization, ranked the VA system, by a variety of criteria, as better not only than the sort of care offered by Medicare but even the best civilian healthcare plans.

Phillip Longman, a fellow at the New America Foundation and author of the forthcoming book "Best Care Anywhere: Why VA Health Care Is Better Than Yours," says that among the veterans who rely on the system, "The overall picture is one of overwhelming satisfaction with the care..."

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