Congress boosts black lung treatment funding by millions - Entrepreneur Generations

"Rural medical clinics that are struggling to respond to an epidemic of a fatal lung disease plaguing coal miners received a 40 percent boost in federal funding with the passage of the omnibus spending bill last week," Howard Berkes reports for NPR. Twenty-eight black lung clinics in 15 coal mining states will get a $10 million increase in funding, up from $2.7 million.


The funding, sought by a bipartisan group of congressmen, will be a critical tool in treating a disease the government whose impact the government has been slow to recognize. Despite the much lower numbers from the federal government, independent NPR research showed about 2,000 cases of progressive massive fibrosis, commonly called black lung, diagnosed in Appalachia since 2010. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health had only reported 99 new cases in the same time period, but bumped the number up to 416 after NPR's research was published. The agency confirmed NPR's findings last month.

The drive for more funding was spearheaded by Virginia Representatives: Democrat Bobby Scott, who is the ranking member of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, and Republican H. Morgan Griffith. They and four other congressmen wrote an open letter to President Trump last year in which they noted that black lung clinics "have faced a substantial increase in demands from coal miners for screening, diagnosis, and pulmonary rehabilitation" and that "some clinics are so underfunded that they are operating with obsolete and inefficient diagnostic equipment, which is needlessly increasing miners' radiation dose when they receive a chest X-ray."

"Coal miners are proud of the work they do, but should they develop black lung, they also want to be taken care of, and I agree," Griffith said.



from The Rural Blog https://ift.tt/2E2DoH3 Congress boosts black lung treatment funding by millions - Entrepreneur Generations

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