Campaigning on coal: Why aren’t W.Va. Democrats talking more about the black lung disease crisis?

[theHandpuppet]

http://blogs.wvgazette.com/coaltattoo/2014/07/23/campaigning-on-coal-why-arent-w-va-democrats-talking-more-about-the-black-lung-disease-crisis/
The Charleston Gazette
Campaigning on coal: Why aren’t W.Va. Democrats talking more about the black lung disease crisis?
July 23, 2014 by Ken Ward Jr.

As I was writing this Wednesday morning, I’m listening in on today’s big U.S. Senate committee hearing on the federal Environmental Protection Agency’s proposal to reduce greenhouse pollution from coal-fired power plants. There was quite a lot of political theater, though, and my mind kept wandering back to yesterday’s Senate HELP Committee hearing about black lung benefits.

This was a hearing called to address the many issues raised about the legal system and our medical system by Chris Hamby’s amazing, Pulitzer Prize-winning series about the way the coal industry and its lawyers and doctors work to keep miners from getting black lung benefits. We had a story on the hearing here, quoting retired coal miner Robert Bailey from Princeton, W.Va (shown in the photo above).:

Living with black lung is thinking about every breath you take. Policies and laws need to be changed to give hope and life to those who don’t have time for stall tactics.

But it’s worth checking out Chris’s piece, which reports:

In an extraordinary rebuke to a doctor at one of America’s top hospitals, the U.S. Department of Labor has informed about 1,100 coal miners that their claims for black lung benefits may have been wrongly denied because of the actions of a powerful physician at the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions, the department’s deputy secretary told senators Tuesday.... MORE at link provided above.