Another disgrace from W.R. Grace
A year ago, W.R. Grace point man Alan Stringer assured Libby asbestos victims that his company would continue to see them through their health-care problems.
Stringer was quoted in the Daily Inter Lake, saying "as long as this goes, I've committed to helping with the medical plan."
Oh, the difference a year can make.
Libby asbestos victims now know that "as long as this goes" means right now. About 800 Libby residents enrolled in Grace's medical plan were put on notice a couple of weeks ago that they either don't have asbestos-related disease anymore or may not be as sick as they think they are. Letters sent out by HNA/Triveris, Grace's contracted administrator of the medical plan, explained how benefits would be scaled back.
Meanwhile, Stringer, sent to Libby in 1999 to handle damage control for national media attention about asbestos poisoning linked to Grace's vermiculite mine, has apparently retreated to his home in Seattle. He was one of seven top Grace executives indicted earlier this year on criminal charges arising out of Grace's operation of the Libby mine. Specifically, he faces three counts of obstruction of justice for allegedly impeding a federal investigation of asbestos contamination in Libby.
The phone at Stringer's Libby office has been disconnected. Grace's hired public-relations spokesman in Maryland issued a short statement to the media, saying the Libby medical-plan audit was conducted by Health Network America and all questions should be directed to that company.
Once again, there's an undertone from Grace that the shift in coverage is not its fault. It's a mantra all too familiar to the hundreds of Libby-area residents who are sick or dying from asbestos disease. Time and time again the corporate giant has refused to take responsibility for the damage it left in Libby. For disheartened asbestos victims, this is just the latest low blow.
Grace's medical plan was the corporation's answer to making things right with the folks it poisoned. Miners, spouses and other Libby residents who could prove they were sick enough to qualify for coverage got their medical expenses paid by Grace. It hasn't been a trouble-free process, though.
Grace's medical experts continue to use guidelines developed for people exposed to chrysotile asbestos, which differs significantly from the more toxic amphibole asbestos found with the vermiculite formerly mined near Libby, according to lung expert Dr. Alan Whitehouse of Libby.
Whitehouse said Grace's refusal to distinguish between the types of asbestos is only a tool to avoid paying benefits.
There's speculation by several Libby community leaders that the reduction in medical-plan benefits is a ploy by Grace to lessen its liability as it works through a bankruptcy settlement. If Grace's plan administrator says these people aren't sick, then the company is off the hook.
This logic, of course, flies in the face of an entire health-care system that says otherwise.
Libby residents feared all along that Grace would leave them in the lurch when it came to paying for medical treatment. It seems those fears may be well-founded.
And if Grace won't pay for treatment of the people it sickened, who will? Yet again, Libby is left waiting and wondering how to clear the latest hurdle in an obstacle course left by Grace that never seems to end.