Libby, Mont. – Dozens of foot tubes connect Gayla Benefield with her oxygen machine, so that she can walk from room to room in her house on the picturesque Kootenai river, surrounded by the cabinet.
Like many people who live in this remote city about 80 miles from the border between the US and Canada, the 81-year-old has soon asbestosOr scars of the lungs of asbestos exposure.
Her father worked at a now closed mine that supplied most of the world in the world, a mineral with a wide range of use in insulation, fire -resistant and even gardening. The mine closed in 1990 and in 1999, one Seattle Post-Intelligencer Research Public revealed the relationship between the mineral infected with asbestos and the increasing number of sick libby residents.
Benefield remembered the white matter that covered her father’s clothes when he came home from work, and she later learned that the whole family was exposed to asbestos, a small fiber that undergoes in the lining of the lungs.
“In the end, those scars will completely surround your lungs,” said Benefield, “and you slowly strangle.”
The Environmental Protection Agency explained parts of Libby A Superfund -site In 2002. Seven years later, the agency declared an emergency for public health for the city – a scoop in American history. A study showed that 694 inhabitants of Libby had died of an asbestos -related cause from 1979 to 2011. Moreover, health providers in the city of 3,200 estimate that 1 in 10 residents has an asbestos -related disease.
That estimate is of the Center for Asbestos -related diseaseOr map, a 501 (C) (3) non -profit clinic that has provided free lung displays for the locals. The clinic, which is mainly active through US government financing, has screened More than 8,900 people. Because asbestos -related disease symptoms can take 30 years or more to appear, almost a third of the screening of the clinic for new patients, according to a card report of 2024.
But now residents of Libby can no longer receive that care because a judgment in a BNSF -Spoorweg laws closed the card clinic in May. Clinic leaders fight against the judicial order and have sworn to reopen its doors, but the lawsuit is not the only threat to the survival of the clinic.
The federal subsidy that supplies 80% of the operational income of the clinic is On a list of cuts The Trump government is considering. If the $ 3 million subsidy is cut, the clinic would probably close forever, said Card Executive Director Tracy McNew.
The subsidy was frozen and then not frozen, after the Office of Management and Budget has issued a memo freezing subsidies that have to do with non -governmental organizations; Diversity, fairness and inclusion; And other areas. But the White House civil servants have said that they will continue to revise those subsidies in potential cuts, so that MCNEW remains uncertain about the status of the subsidy, even as clinic officers – and lawyers of the Ministry of Justice – fighting in court to seize the card activa that were taken in the BNSF right shop.
The Office of Management and Budget, The White House. And the Ministry of Health and Human Services did not respond to the request of NPR and KFF Health News to comment on the status of the subsidy of the clinic.
Cutting the subsidy may not be easy, said Tim Bechtold, a lawyer who represented the clinic in the BNSF case. The Affordable Care Act gave Libby asbestos patients access to Medicare and calls on the federal government to offer subsidies to finance diagnostic services for them.
In 2020, the Supreme Court of Montana judged That BNSF could be held liable for the distribution of asbestos along its spurs when the Libby Vermiculite railway shifted throughout the country.
The year before, The railway continued According to the False claims act, the card claimed to have cheated the government by wrongly diagnosing patients and to help them request medicare benefits. The law allows private parties To adopt fraud cases On behalf of the federal government as federal public prosecutors, refuse to accept the case. Awarded money in those cases goes back to the federal government, but private parties retain part of the profit.
A jury Gemistered with the claims of BNSF That card falsified the data of more than 300 patients who received federal benefits. Card officials said that those patients did not get a diagnosis of asbestos -related disease, but the clinic determined that they are eligible for Medicare under the ACA based on abnormal radiology values.
In a statement to NPR and KFF Health News, BNSF denied that the lawsuit was an attempt to prevent legal liability for asbestos infection along its traces.
In 2023, the clinic applied for bankruptcy, With reference to the BNSF right store. BNSF persuaded a district court in May Allow the company to grab Almost all ownership of the card to collect its share in the opinion of around $ 6 million. It took control of almost everything, from the building from the clinic to the lawn mower.
The federal government is Comes to the defense of the map. In a court application, the office of the American lawyer for Montana, Kurt Alme, said because card ownership was largely purchased with federal subsidy financing, BNSF cannot grab it.
The case has moved to the federal court and the judge is expected to postpone whether BNSF card activa can seize to collect his part of the verdict. In the meantime, card patients will have to look somewhere else for screening and treatment, services that are difficult to find.
Diagnosing people with asbestos -related disease or demonstrating that other conditions are linked to exposure to asbestos requires expertise, said Robert KratzkeAn oncologist at the University of Minnesota who studies cancers tied to asbestos.
“Most doctors would have modest no idea they should look for,” he said.
Kratzke explained that X-rays or CT scans should be done in a specific way and read by specialized doctors, known as B ReadersTo diagnose patients.
Kratzke said that rebuilding the expertise of the card clinic would be difficult in a small town like Libby.
“It would be very, very difficult for the doctors and hospitals in Libby to follow these people because they should be followed for the rest of their lives,” said Kratzke.
Jenan Swenson is the only one of the five children of Gayla Benefield who has not yet been diagnosed with an asbestos -related disease.
She received the results of her last screening in the card clinic the day before it was closed in May. For now the 62-year-old is free.
Swenson ultimately expects to develop breathing problems from her exposure to asbestos as a child. Her mother, for whom she is a caregiver, also needs current impressions for lung cancer.
She is worried that they have to travel from the state to find that care if the card clinic does not reopen, of which Swenson said they cannot afford it. She doesn’t think her family will be the only one.
“There will probably be many people who have just been lost without a place to go,” said Swenson.
This article is part of a partnership with NPR And Montana Public Radio.
KFF Health News is a National Newsroom that produces in-depth journalism on health problems and one of the core activities of KFF is-a independent source of research, polling and journalism of health policy. Read more about Kff.
Use our content
This story can be re -published (details) for free.
#real #estate #confiscated #federal #financing #uncertain #Montana #Asbestos #Clinic #fights #life #KFF #Health #News