The fact that other countries have effective health care systems run by the government suggests that the conclusion we should draw from the VA fiasco is that either the U.S. government is particularly incompetent or the incompetence is local and limited to a specific department(s). I'm inclined to believe the latter.

That being the case, a further conclusion I would end up drawing is that both largely private and largely public health care systems work well, but that the U.S. suffers from running a health care system that takes no opinion as to which form it should take.