mr. nicholson this question. it seems to me for a long time no matter who was in power, we had a lot of trouble bureaucratically running the va. when you were in that position, did anybody step back and say, why are we doing this? why don't we let these vets use their vet card as more or less an insurance card and go out into the public sector and get the health care that we need? why are we running a separate medical system just for veterans? >> well, that question does come up. and that's a fair question, i think, but, you know, we have a sacred trust with veterans in this country, started with abraham lincoln who said we have to take care of him who fell and his widow and orphan. we created this absolutely fabulous system. there's no country in the world that takes care of veterans like the united states, but it's very big. we have 21 million veterans in our country, and we used to see about a million of them every week. they're now seeing more, according to the statistics that i read. so it's a very big sprea