A class-action lawsuit on behalf of six Cold War-era nuclear workers in Colorado and New Mexico is drawing interest from other nuclear workers across the country, the attorney who filed it said Thursday.
The lawsuit accuses Bush administration Labor officials of holding up health care the government owes to elderly workers who became ill after working with radioactive and other toxic materials at mines and other facilities in the nation’s nuclear weapons complex.
About 100 workers in Colorado and New Mexico, and unknown numbers nationwide, are affected by the bureaucratic hurdles that in many cases violate doctors’ orders, said attorney Greg Piche of the Denver-based firm Holland and Hart.
Since last summer, U.S. Department of Labor workers’ compensation officials have waged “an orchestrated, internal campaign to limit access to medical and other benefits available to nuclear energy workers” under federal law, according the lawsuit, filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court.
Labor officials “have engaged in a deliberate program to unreasonably delay payment for authorized skilled nursing services, so as to disrupt the availability of skill nursing suppliers to the energy workers,” the suit alleges.
“These actions by the defendants have artificially created legal, economic and medical uncertainties that have jeopardized and continue to jeopardize the health and emotional well-being of the plaintiffs and threaten the availability of nursing services to them.”
Denver-based Professional Case Management, which cares for ill weapons workers, was put in the position of risking losses or cutting off services to workers who couldn’t get the government to pay their bills, Piche said.
Professional Case Management asked U.S. Sens. Ken Salazar and Wayne Allard of Colorado to break bureaucratic jams last year.
Labor Department officials raised questions about whether the services that workers requested were necessary.
The workers are frail and in many cases dying with respiratory problems, Piche said.
