Manning the main switchboard for the Central Texas Veterans Health Care System requires skills akin to a symphony conductor. Beginning in 2006, Marlon Askew, who spent 15 years in the armed forces and saw combat in Desert Storm, worked as the system’s central teleoperator and then supervisor, connecting thousands of veterans who call each day to the system’s Temple and Waco hospitals; its six clinics in Brownwood, College Station, Cedar Park, Palestine, and La Grange; and myriad medical, dental, surgical, psychiatric, and rehabilitation units.
But in 2024 and 2025, Askew told the Texas Observer that backlogs started to overwhelm the system. He had just five employees under him, and some veterans were waiting an entire day to reach clinic representatives. Before he retired in May, he said some veterans became so frustrated that they threatened to kill themselves or Askew and his coworkers. As a U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) patient himself, Askew said he’s also seeing delays in getting appointments: A few years ago, he got surgery within a month of being diagnosed with throat cancer; recently, he had to wait more than two months just to get an MRI for another medical problem.
Askew attributes the current slowdown at least partly to the Trump administration’s decision to shrink the VA workforce—a move he says is hitting the many VA workers who are veterans themselves doubly hard. Another teleoperator left at the same time he did, leaving only four to man the switchboard; the VA then eliminated its nightshift, routing late night calls to an already busy emergency room. “You say you’re going to take care of us when you’re not taking care of us,” Askew said of Trump. “You’re hurting us.”
