Obamacare is Saving Coal Miners

Handing the state treasury over to Big Coal won't save coal miners. Eliminating EPA won't save coal miners. You know what is saving coal miners? Obamacare.

Via Barefoot and Progressive, good news from the Herald:

Proposed changes to U.S. Department of Labor rules would make it easier for coal miners and their families to obtain black lung benefits. . . .

The 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act – dubbed “Obamacare” by critics – requires the Office of Workers’ Compensation Program to reinstate two provisions of the Black Lung Benefits Act that were eliminated in 1981.

After 1982, survivors of a coal miner who was totally disabled due to pneumoconiosis – commonly referred to as black lung disease – had to prove the disease had caused the miner’s death. One new rule would make that an automatic presumption for those who worked in coal mines for at least 15 years and suffered a totally disabling respiratory impairment.

The other rule would automatically transfer black lung benefits from the late recipient to eligible survivors.

SNIP

Pennsylvania leads the nation in black lung claims with 138,545 filed since 1973, and $56 million in payments during fiscal 2011. Statistics on the Labor Department’s website show West Virginia was second during that period with 117,321 claims and nearly $47 million in payments last year, while Kentucky was third with 98,248 claims and about $34 million in payments.

In all, 662,249 claims have been filed nationwide since 1973, with payouts last year totaling $227.4 million.

The disease was once thought defeated but has been reappearing among younger miners in recent years. The federal Mine Safety and Health Administration’s report on the Upper Big Branch mine disaster, for example, found that at least 17 of the 29 miners killed had black lung.

The explosion at the Massey Energy mine in southern West Virginia was fueled by a deadly combination of methane gas and coal dust. Black lung is caused by inhaling dust, and MSHA has been developing rules designed to better protect the nation’s miners from the irreversible disease.

Meanwhile, the deeply deluded president of the UMW thinks the greatest threat to coal miners is EPA administrator Lisa Jackson.

So desperate is he to attack President Obama that he actually equates coal miners to Osama bin Laden.

Erik Loomis takes him apart.

Coal miners have been fucked over by every corporate and political power player for more than a century. Their dependence on a boom-and-bust industry leave them vulnerable to every plausible lie and mistrusting the truth.

The fact is, they can't be saved. Their jobs died decades ago, along with their towns, their future and their hope. They're the walking dead, useful to Big Coal only as a fake excuse to keep mining the rock that will kill us all.

If we banned all fossil fuels tomorrow, they'd be better off.