I don't qualify for Medicare, my wife does. She goes to the same doctor we went to when I had private insurance. My medical care is about equal in quality and convenience at the VA, but it is not free, I do pay for every visit and for my medications. But it is affordable. Both my cousin, and several of my friends at work also go to VA. My cousin (also a Vet) has just had hip replacement surgery. He survived just fine. He went to college on the GI Bill too, and he teaches at USF now.

I'm not qualified to evaluate medical care, but I can't detect any difference in quality or convenience. The picture painted by Conservatives of dank, filthy mass-production medical care provided by barely literate staff, long waits and death panels, is a lie. Just like those lies they spin off about European and Canadian National Health programs. I've talked to a half-dozen Europeans, Canadians, and an Australian who are not only happy with their medical care, but astonished at how our free enterprise system can be so expensive and inefficient, not just for the patient, but for the government itself.

I went to a state college, Florida taxpayers paid for most of my education, and the education of all the affluent kids who went there was also similarly subsidized, except for the token tuition that got you in the door.

I managed to get in because of GI Bill, which paid for my tuition, but I still had to work other jobs to pay my bills. They got a subsidy from Daddy. Without the gov aid, I would probably not have been able to go like they did, take advantage of those subsidies, and I'd be working for one of those kids now (if I had a job at all). Instead, my education allowed me to earn a decent living and retire, and pay taxes to send some of THEIR kids to school. I don't begrudge them that. Those affluent kids also got a subsidy, one I had access to only because I got GI Bill. They did not "pay for it". They sucked off the taxpayers' tit too. Welfare doesn't all go to the poor.

I got a damned good education, too. For one thing, it helped refine my political opinions.