DENVER-
Delays and restrictions to health care for sick former energy workers are “financially rewarding” to the federal government and life threatening to the workers, according to a lawsuit filed Wednesday.
Attorneys for six former workers seeks class action status for their lawsuit, which asks a judge to force the U.S. Department of Labor and its departments to comply with the 2000 Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act.
Congress authorized the measure to help former Department of Energy workers who became ill after building the nation’s nuclear arsenal during the Cold War. During a recent hearing in Washington, budget documents surfaced that found the Labor Department’s Office of Workman’s Compensation Programs wanting to “contain growth in the costs of benefits.”
Assistant Deputy Labor Secretary Shelby Hallmark, who oversees the program and is named a defendant in the suit, said the Labor Department is not trying to deny care to ill weapons workers, but to make sure the level of care was appropriate. Hallmark could not be reached Wednesday.
“You have the same effect and the same players,” said Greg Piche, an attorney with the law firm that filed the suit “Its not too hard to draw the dots.”
The suit says the workers “for the most part (are) isolated, frail and suffering severe and/or terminal disease” and delays and restrictions are life threatening.
The workers named in the lawsuit are: Ismael Montano of Cortez; Lionel Palacio of Grants, N.M.; Addison Keaton of Stout, Ohio; Eugene Bailey of Franklin Furnace, Ohio; Phil DeHerrera of Grants, N.M.; Clarence Worthen of Grants N.M.
According to the lawsuit, Labor Department officials are denying, delaying and limiting doctors orders to provide high levels of home nursing care for severely ill and dying weapons workers. Some workers have had to wait seven months or more for their care to be approved, and then at a level less than their doctors ordered.
Some groups of workers are expected to soon receive automatic compensation under a special provision for workers with radiation-related cancer who worked at sites where record keeping was poor.
An advisory board this month is expected to decide on such automatic compensation for groups of workers in Colorado, Iowa, Tennessee and the Marshall Islands. Similar recommendations would follow for workers from other sites across the country.
Under the program, created by Congress five years ago, workers get $150,000 plus future medical benefits.
