Analysis: Asbestos Aid
Health Care Bill Extra: Libby’s Deserved Perk Isn’t Pork
Deep in the Senate's health care bill is a provision from Sen. Max Baucus that expands benefits for Libby residents sickened by asbestos.By Amy Linn, 12-21-09
The W.R. Grace vermiculite mine above Libby, closed since 1990. Photo courtesy EPA.
Turns out, the federal health care package that won preliminary approval in the U.S. Senate has a bit of buried treasure.
According to Robert Pear of the New York Times, there’s “cryptic” language hidden deep in the 2,700-page health care bill that gives expanded Medicare coverage to a very specific group of Montanans. The group is so narrow, in fact, that it only includes “individuals exposed to environmental health hazards recognized as a public health emergency in a declaration issued by the federal government on June 17.”
There’s only one emergency that fits the category, of course: it’s the one declared in Libby, Montana, where widespread asbestos contamination from a former W.R. Grace & Co. vermiculite mine has sickened thousands of people and killed hundreds, including mineworkers, their families and everyday citizens.
Democratic Sen. Max Baucus “has been trying to get the government to help them” for years, Pear writes.
Baucus explained himself this way to Pear: “The people of Libby were poisoned and have been dying for more than a decade,” he said. “New residents continue to get sick all the time. Public health tragedies like this could happen in any town in America. We need this type of mechanism to help people when they need it most.”
Inserting pet projects into complex bills is business-as-usual for Congress, which all-too-often funnels money to pork-barrel schemes like the infamously unnecessary ”bridge to nowhere” in Alaska.
But it’s not always a boondoggle when lawmakers seek special considerations. Sometimes, it’s a blessing.
Click here to read a summary and the text of the health care reform bill adopted in the House. Click here to read CNN’s handy summary of the Senate version.
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