In jeopardy
There’s an old saying to be careful what you wish for because you just might get it.
Well, there’s certainly a lot of wisdom in that saying, and it’s something that at least some current and retired coal miners might be thinking about these days.
The miners were one of Donald Trump’s largest voting blocs in the presidential election, giving him overwhelming support in the Appalachian region of the country, including right here in Greene, Fayette, Washington and Westmoreland counties.
Trump won the miners over with his promise to bring the mining industry back to life by ending regulations which he claimed had stifled its development.
He also won over the miners with his talk about ending Obamacare, also known as the Affordable Care Act, and promising to replace it with something far better.
The only problem is that many miners are finding out for the first time that Obamacare had a provision that was very helpful to them and their families. When Congress was passing Obamacare, former West Virginia Senator Robert C. Byrd inserted an amendment which stipulated that miners didn’t have to prove that mining caused their black lung disease if they worked for 15 years in the mining industry.
“I don’t think people really considered what a repeal of this would be,” said Ed Yankovich, vice president of the United Mine Workers District 2. He noted that many miners didn’t realize that the Byrd amendment was a part of Obamacare.
Prior to the passage of the Byrd amendment and Obamacare, miners would have to prove that mining caused their black lung disease, a process with numerous medical evaluations and procedures, which took years to complete. Often times the process was so long that miners died before they received their benefits.
The Byrd Amendment was implemented in 2013 and has been “huge,” according to Lynda Glagola, executive director of Lungs at Work, which works with the United Mine Workers and the Department of Labor to provide local miners with black lung benefits and other medical assistance.
“We’re busier than we’ve ever been,” she added.
Black lung benefit claims in the 1990s would routinely take seven years to complete but now only take two or three years because of Obamacare, said Heath Long, an attorney who handles black lung cases for the UMW.
“For lawyers who work in this for a living, that’s lightning speed,” added Long.
But things could be slowed down considerably, depending on what replaces Obamacare if anything. The problem is that Trump has been all over the place with his plans to repeal Obamacare, and he’s said nothing about keeping or dropping the Byrd Amendment. House Speaker Paul Ryan has talked about starting to repeal Obamacare as early as this week, but he’s been carefully guarded about his replacement plans. Meanwhile, some Republicans in Congress want Obamacare repealed so badly they don’t care if it’s replaced or not.
“It’s all in jeopardy, because no one knows what the replacement is,” said Yankovich.
“You can’t just repeal and not replace,” said Tony Burnsak, president of UMWA Local 2300 in Uniontown. “There’ll be a lot of people starving and dying if that happens.”
As the repeal process unfolds, you can be certain that many current and retired miners will be watching very carefully to see what happens.
And they’ll be hoping that their dream of having Obamacare repealed doesn’t turn into a nightmare.