The Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care act signed into law by President Obama in late March is a complicated bill that overhauls the nation's health care system over a period of five years.

It sometimes is mentioned in the same breath with the United Kingdom's National Health Service Act of 1946 which set up that country's government-run health-care system.

But that law was a paragon of succinctness, occupying only 92 pamphlet pages. Here (in three parts in Adobe Acrobat PDF format) is Britain's National Health Service Act of 1946:

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