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Guest Commentary: May 1, 2001
Black Lung Disease Regs Opposed by Bush Administration
The Honorable Jay Rockefeller (D-WV)
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Every year 1,400 Americans lose their lives to black lung disease as a result of working in coal mines, and yet the new Administration has tried to block sensible new rules to make the black lung application process fairer. This is outrageous.
Black lung is one of the most devastating diseases you can imagine –- it ferociously attacks the lungs and makes breathing laborious. Even the simplest activities of daily life become difficult to impossible.
On December 20, 2000, the Department of Labor issued new regulations intended to ease the claims process for coal miners stricken with black lung disease. There is a blatant effort by the Bush administration and the coal industry to cancel the new rules. The new rules would prevent mine operators from submitting unlimited medical paperwork which keeps claims tied up in litigation for years. They went into effect on January 19th.
On February 9th, Judge Emmet G. Sullivan granted a Bush administration request to halt processing of new claims for federal black lung benefits. Now, hundreds of miners and their families will be forced to wait for months for their claims to be processed.
Coal miners trying to cope with black lung disease in West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, and throughout our country's coalfields deserve better. The black lung regulations we have fought so hard for should not be pulled out from under them simply because they were not put in place until the end of the previous administration.
Allowing these regulations to move forward is crucial to the well-being of coal miners. Otherwise, they are stuck with the existing complicated and often unfair process for determining their eligibility for benefits.
Coal miners have risked their lives to fuel our nation’s growth and only seek a fair and reasonable process to determine their eligibility for black lung benefits. I will continue to urge the Bush administration to reconsider its efforts to repeal these regulations.
 How to contact Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-West Virginia)
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