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I'm a member of a VFW and the VA is popular enough that we have people who assist veterans in applying for VA benefits. I don't doubt that media reports of incompetence are accurate, but the impression I get is that this is largely dependent on the hospital and the doctor. I'd certainly prefer the VA over any of the smaller rural hospitals and over most of the suburban regional hospitals.
It's popular because the financial benefits are great: for many (maybe even most) veterans the care they get through the VA system is either free or close to it. And the VA Community Care Network program means that for outpatient stuff you can actually get seen by a non-VA doctor and the VA wills still pay the whole bill (there are hoops you have to jump through, but a lot of people are motivated to jump if it means they don't have to pay a cent of their healthcare bills).
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Commented somewhere else but there are things to like about the VA, I suspect that part of the issue is that the part where it is weakest (inpatient care) is the part most patients know the least and where its hardest to tell when your care is ass.
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