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mahatmakanejeeves

(56,896 posts)
Wed Jan 25, 2017, 04:35 PM Jan 2017

Obamacare Repeal Threatens A Health Benefit Popular In Coal Country

Obamacare Repeal Threatens A Health Benefit Popular In Coal Country

January 24, 2017·5:05 AM ET

Heard on Morning Edition

At the Pulmonary Rehabilitation Clinic in Scarbro, W.Va., oxygen tubes dangle from the noses of three miners slowly pedaling on stationary bikes. All of these men have black lung — a disease caused by breathing in coal dust. Over time, the dust coats the lungs and causes them to harden. Hard lungs don't easily expand and contract, and that makes it difficult to breathe.

"You try to get air in them, and they don't want to cooperate with you as they did before," says retired miner James Bounds, speaking with great effort. Not every coal miner gets black lung, just as some smokers don't get cancer. But for those who do, Bounds says, the disease is devastating. ... "There's no cure at all," he says. "It keeps getting harder and harder until one day, I guess, you take your last breath and they won't expand for you no more."

Bounds is one of about 38,000 miners or eligible survivors — usually a spouse — currently receiving black lung benefits. The benefits are compensation for the physical damage Bounds sustained while doing his job. It took him 4 1/2 years to get approved, despite the fact that his lungs are so bad he has to stop moving to talk. ... But now the qualification process is supposed to move faster. The Affordable Care Act includes special provisions that make the process of getting black lung benefits easier for coal miners. If the ACA is repealed, gaining these benefits could become much more difficult, effectively harming a group of people that President Trump has promised to protect.
....

The Affordable Care Act includes something called the Byrd Amendments. One shifts the burden of proof — instead of miners having to prove that mining caused their black lung, the coal companies have to prove that mining didn't.
....

This story is part of NPR's reporting partnership with West Virginia Public Broadcasting and Kaiser Health News.
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Obamacare Repeal Threatens A Health Benefit Popular In Coal Country (Original Post) mahatmakanejeeves Jan 2017 OP
Sorry... pbmus Jan 2017 #1
on the one hand DonCoquixote Jan 2017 #2
Trump supporters -- Those damn government programs, nobody needs or wants them. Hoyt Jan 2017 #3
They voted for it. I better not hear any whining about it. n/t Coventina Jan 2017 #4

DonCoquixote

(13,615 posts)
2. on the one hand
Wed Jan 25, 2017, 04:55 PM
Jan 2017

It is very easy to listen to the devil on your left shoulder whispering "GA those Trump voters are going to get it now! I hope they enjoy getting the black one disease that Joe Manchin and his daughters have prepared for them!"

Okay if you are hearing this voice in your head, tell it to shut up. Fear not, I'm not going to give you a version of "the quality of mercy is not strained", because we know is pretty is that sentiment is is at least 40% lies. However, if we want to go ahead and stop losing, were going to have to look at a variety of people, even people that we do not trust, and find some common thing where we are not appealing to their better angels, but to the raw naked self interest that we both have.

When the body starts stacking in Trump country, and all yes they will, we do need to be there to say "here is something that will help us both." Yes, I know it is repellent that a bunch of conservative, blue-eyed deaths in Trump country, that were partially self-inflicted gunshot's will go ahead and appeal, assuming that this should happen to someone else, not good people like them. Yes we know that what that sentiment translates to is the idea that "worldwide, we are Christian, we are American, the other people are supposed to suffer!, Not us! Yes, yes let us not deny any of that! Let us not deny any of that anymore than we deny that some people on Wall Street, and who were enjoying the fruits of serving Wall Street, such as moving into the gentrified neighborhoods were former ghettos became sky high red monsters, said their own version of the same sentiment.

The good news is we do not need virtue, or even the pretense of virtue the start turning things around. All we have to do is rely on the Ross self interest that people have, which makes them bedfellows were former enemies better than 1000 eloquent poems. Now I'm not talking about Ayn Rand self-interest; after all most of that is not real outright self interest, the propaganda used by a bunch of spoiled rich children to justify their weakness, the fact that they are too weak to actually win on a truly level playing field with rules. No I am talking about the fact that as much as Jane from New York and Jill from West Virginia made genuinely he each other as much is John from California and Jake from rural Michigan will hate each other, both of them know and will be forced to face the fact that to the billionaires they are all snackfood.

 

Hoyt

(54,770 posts)
3. Trump supporters -- Those damn government programs, nobody needs or wants them.
Wed Jan 25, 2017, 05:07 PM
Jan 2017

Yeah right, you ignorant fools.

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