With health benefits threatened, retired coal miners face impossible choices

[DesertRat]

Will we hear from tRump on the coal miner health care crisis??

COAL CITY, W.Va. — The sandwich bag is stuffed with pill bottles, so full its sides bulge. Rickie Coalson takes them out one by one: small shiny capsules for stomach problems, big granular ones for arthritis. Two different medications to keep his heart pumping, and two kinds of inhalers to help him breathe. Migraine pills and blood pressure pills, another lung medication, aspirin he needs to take daily.

Coalson, 59, is one of about 16,000 retired coal miners whose health care benefits will end in a few months if Congress does not replenish the funds that were supposed to keep these workers insured for the rest of their lives. He’s now wondering which of his medications — and doctor’s appointments — he’ll be able to live without.

“If my blood pressure’s not real high, maybe skip that, or if I can stand the arthritis pain, don’t take that for a while,” he said, kneeling on his living room floor surrounded by orange prescription vials. “You do what you have to do to survive. Coal miners are proud people, we won’t beg. But when they owe it to you, it’s not begging.”

These impossible choices are being considered all over coal country, and with them come a flood of resentment toward the coal companies, judges, and lawmakers that miners blame for their predicament. As coal companies have filed for bankruptcy, some have been allowed to stop paying into retired miners’ funds. Now, that money is running out.

https://www.statnews.com/2016/12/19/coal-miners-health-insurance/

[Wounded Bear]

1. Well, one candidate actually gave a shit about this stuff...

but people in coal country bought the sexy red cap and bumper sticker policy statements.

I feel for the guy, because I'm a good bleeding heart liberal, and I would not mind if my federal government helped him out. But it's not the Democrats that are taking this guy's health care away.

[DesertRat]

2. Spot on. n/t

[hollowdweller]

3. Republicans used to care about it too. However

They have now so demonized unions and associated them with democrats if they voted to help them like they have done before they would be in trouble with their grassroots.

[Wounded Bear]

12. I don't think they ever really cared...

but they used to pay a price unless they acted like they did. Now a days? Not so much.

[Yavin4]

4. I'm fresh out of empathy for these people.

They're the ones who keep voting in the very Republicans that cut their health care benefits, and then want to blame immigrants and Black people for all of their problems.

[Coventina]

7. Me too.

I'm just going to start telling people, "You broke it, you bought it."

[gratuitous]

5. "Coal miners are proud people, we won't beg."

Wanna bet?

And what does it mean, really, when Coalson says "they owe it to you"? People whose health was compromised in some other way aren't owed basic health care? They should die slowly in agonizing pain, because nobody "owes" them humane treatment?

Good luck holding Donald Trump to his campaign promises, West Virginia.

[world wide wally]

6. Trump digs coal

[Generic Other]

10. Yes, the sick ones will now be able to go back to work

if Trump has his way. Smart move, coal miners!

[LanternWaste]

23. And Warren Harding dug horse drawn carriages.

And Warren Harding dug horse drawn carriages. Didn't really change what was to be though.

[Nay]

8. Good luck, West Virginia, because the guy who got 80% of your vote is

soon going to be cutting you all off at the knees. And you know what? It's not gonna be the libruls' fault.

[Aristus]

9. The final part made me sick.

Sure. Fine. Pray for Mitch McConnell. Forgive him. Whatever. Just stop voting for him...

[Vinca]

11. Well, there was a choice between 2 candidates. One gave a shit and the other didn't.

Coal miners have been snookered just like those Carrier workers who will be out of a job as soon as the Indiana taxpayer dollars build enough robots.

[hatrack]

13. Nothing that more opioids won't cure!

Bring the pills - pharma makes money, pharmacies make money, and no pesky long-term health costs.

Health Care - the New Republican Way!

[Crunchy Frog]

19. I think the pills have mostly been cut off, but there's always heroin.

[hatrack]

22. Or fentanyl - even MORE effective!

.

[irisblue]

14. my sympathy is thin very thin

you chose this, deal with it. Speaking as an healthcare worker in eastern Ohio.

[KamaAina]

15. Didn't Orange Julius Caesar sweep coal country?

Except maybe southern Illinois?

[Solly Mack]

16. ...

Coal miners are proud people, we won’t beg. But when they owe it to you, it’s not begging.”

"...with them come a flood of resentment toward the coal companies, judges, and lawmakers that miners blame for their predicament."

And yet they really don't see it, do they?

Sad.

[AgadorSparticus]

17. This must be what it is like to have a relative addicted to drugs.

Let them lose their healthcare. Sometimes people have to learn the hard way.

[Crunchy Frog]

20. They won't be ready to change until they hit rock bottom.

Or at least that's what I've heard.

[AgadorSparticus]

21. I am beginning to believe it.

[Starry Messenger]

18. After next year my ACA will disappear.

My doctor will be the herb shelf at Safeway again, but no coal miner ever gave a shit about a coastal elite like me, did they?