Quoted from http://www.flatheadbeacon.com/articles/article/libby_residents_relate_gains_drawbacks_of_asbestos_aid/19253/
Libby Residents Relate Gains, Drawbacks of Asbestos Aid
By Dan Testa , 08-24-10 LIBBY – Though the visit by Health Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to this Lincoln County community was brief, it is possible she gained some insights Monday afternoon into what residents here want and need – and how those forces are opposed in some ways.
Libby residents at the public meeting, held by Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., expressed a need for more help to deal with the asbestos-related diseases many community members are suffering from, yet they also wish to transcend the town’s reputation as site of the worst public health disaster in the U.S. to encourage jobs and growth.
They touted the increasing number of patients receiving care through the Center for Asbestos Related Disease in Libby, yet one patient told Baucus and Sebelius the clinic’s services were being stretched such that he no longer received the attention he used to.
And while some Libby residents thanked Sebelius and Baucus for the health care reform law that passed last year and extended Medicare coverage to those sickened by asbestos, others questioned whether the changes to America’s health care system were Constitutional.
The visit by Sebelius, following a town hall-style meeting earlier that day in Missoula, was part of an effort by Baucus to show the health secretary some of the needs of rural states, and to defend and explain the controversial health care reform effort Democrats recently passed.
“We’ve got a long way to go, but we’ve made great progress here,” Baucus told the crowd of about 40 gathered at Libby City Hall.
The new law contains a provision allowing sick Libby residents to be extended Medicare coverage as the only community in the country currently declared a public health emergency by the Environmental Protection Agency. That declaration stems from the thousands of Libby residents sickened, and the hundreds killed by tremolite asbestos released from the vermiculite mines operated by W.R. Grace and Co. Over the last decade, cleanup of the asbestos has cost hundreds of millions of dollars.
