Eastern Kentucky Miners with Black Lung Get Support Through Health Care Reform

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, commonly known as the health care reform bill, that passed at the federal level on Sunday, expands support to victims of black lung disease. The provisions included reverse major cuts to black lung benefit eligibility made during the Reagan administration.

These provisions will greatly help both the growing number of Eastern Kentucky miners that have black lung disease and their families.

According to the Office of West Virginia's Senator Robert Byrd, the two provisions included in the bill that help black lung victims are:

--In cases where a miner has accumulated 15 or more years of coal mine employment, and there is medical evidence of totally disabling lung disease, there will be a legal presumption that the miner and his widow would be entitled to benefits -- unless there is evidence proving that the miner’s disease was not black lung, or that the disease did not result from coal mine employment; and

--For widows of coal miners who spouses suffered from totally-disabling black lung disease and were collecting benefits, they would no longer have to reapply to retain their modest benefits.

The United Mine Workers Association supported the changes, according to a statement issued by Cecil Roberts yesterday, on March 23rd. In that statement, Roberts criticized the attacks on these provisions made by the "corporate mouthpieces" of the coal industry, labeling the attacks "misleading" and "disingenuous."