When Forbes magazine sent Phillip Longman to identify the best health care in America, they never expected him to find it at the government-funded Veterans Affairs. But it was true. In Best Care Anywhere, Longman expands his reporting into a groundbreaking book that has much to teach about how to reform the U.S. health-care system.

Longman tells the fascinating story of how VA healthcare became so good. In the late 1970s, high patient volume forced VA doctors to develop their own software for keeping track of patients by computer years before private hospitals considered moving beyond paper files. And because most of its patients were aging veterans, the VA had a strong incentive to hone preventive medicine to avoid later complications, benefiting patients' health and the system's bottom line.

The VA's commitment to efficiency stands in stark contrast to the inherent wastefulness of the for-profit system. As Longman expertly details, private health care rewards treatment over wellness, leading to a raft of questionable procedures and supplying a perverse incentive to maintain less-than-optimal care in order to boost profits. In many other realms of health care outside the VA, Longman writes, no investment in quality goes unpunished.

Best Care Anywhere argues that we can take the best elements of the VA system and integrate them with the private sector, creating a system that better serves all Americans.