Sick DOE Workers' Claims Languish

Most cases unreviewed, no compensation paid under 4-year-old plan 

CHARLES POPE / Seattle Post-Intelligencer 29mar04

WASHINGTON—Four years after Vice President Al Gore heralded it as the first step toward "compensating these workers for their suffering," an effort to provide payments to workers made sick by their jobs at Hanford and other nuclear weapons plants is collapsing.

Although tens of millions of dollars have been spent on the program, not one penny has been paid out so far to workers, even though 23,350 claims have been filed since 2001 claiming illnesses caused by exposure to toxic substances on the job. Fewer than 6 percent have been reviewed. The system is overburdened, understaffed and sluggish, and officials say it's unlikely that the pace will accelerate anytime soon.

"We're familiar with how it's working now, and how it's working now is not very good," said Joe Davis, a spokesman for the Department of Energy.

"We are facing an incredible number of filings. We have faced the problem of ramping up our program to meet our own expectations of getting these cases dealt with in a timely manner. It hasn't been easy," he said.

Energy officials say they need more money, even though Congress provided $55 million this fiscal year and probably will grant $43 million next year.

But money will not fix the structural problems that afflict the program, critics say. The biggest problem, they say, is that the Energy Department is not responsible for paying former workers. Once claims make it through the department's bureaucracy, they are funneled either into state-run workers compensation programs or, in the case of Hanford workers and those from some other states, private insurers contracted by the Energy Department. Both kinds of programs are notoriously complicated and thick with even more bureaucracy, and at times adversarial.

How much money a claimant would receive under such systems would vary, but generally it would be annual payments of roughly 60 percent of the worker's last salary.

David Michaels was an assistant energy secretary until 2001, and was an architect of the program. What he envisioned and what became a reality are two very different concepts, he told Senate Energy Committee last year.

"I am disappointed to report to this committee that DOE leadership made a series of decisions to set up a program that will compensate as few people as possible, as slowly as possible," Michaels testified.

"Most of us believed that the new structure ... would overcome that old policy -- known in (DOE headquarters) as 'deny and defend' and would ensure that the goal shared by Congress and the administration of providing timely, adequate and uniform levels of compensation could be reached," he said.

"Senators, I am here to tell you that we were wrong. The structure I recommended has failed."

Action is demanded

The record is so bad that Congress, health advocates and labor unions are intensifying their demands that the program be reformed or even reconstituted. Those frustrations and demands will be on display tomorrow when the Senate Energy Committee examines the program.

"The federal government's implementation of this program has been an insult to the Americans who served our country," said Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, who will offer legislation again this year to reform the program.

Critics want the program transferred to the Department of Labor, which is responsible for a separate, smaller initiative that compensates former workers who are ill because of exposure to beryllium and silica. That program, which began at the same time as DOE's, has so far paid out $720 million.

The program's failure is especially galling to Hanford workers, whose work in hazardous conditions produced the essential materials for nuclear weapons that allowed the United States to win World War II and the Cold War.

"They are patriots and they are Cold War veterans and they should be treated as such," said Randy Knowles, president of the Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical and Energy Workers International Union at Hanford.

"The legislation was passed and a lot of people tend to think, OK, it's a done deal. But people are dying here. People are suffering. Families are suffering. It's time to pony up."

The biggest bottleneck, according to DOE officials, is the review of each case by a physician's panel. This panel, usually composed of three doctors certified in workplace health issues, dissects each case to determine whether the ailment was caused by exposure to hazards at weapons plants. So far, such panels have finished work on just 1,296 of the 23,350 claims filed.

"Sick workers do not have time for DOE to learn on the job. It is time to give this job to those who have the skills and infrastructure to perform," said Richard Miller, vice president of the Government Accountability Project, a non-partisan public interest group that has followed the compensation program closely from its origins.

Miller supports moving the program out of the Energy Department to the Labor Department, which has long experience administering similar funds, including one for miners suffering from black lung disease.

Two approaches, one success

When Congress created the program in October 2000, supporters said it punctuated two indisputable facts. One was that the thousands of workers at Hanford, Savannah River, Oak Ridge and other weapons plants were just as much Cold War veterans as members of the military. The other recognized that the workers were getting sick because of the highly hazardous materials that they worked with and DOE's often-poor record protecting their safety.

"While we cannot undo their suffering, today this administration begins the process of healing by admitting the government's mistakes, designing a process for compensating these workers for their suffering and by becoming an advocate for Department of Energy workers throughout the nuclear weapons complex," Gore said in April 2000 in asking Congress to act.

The program that emerged later that year covered workers or their survivors who became ill or who died as a result of their employment in the nuclear weapons industry. In all, more than 300 facilities fell under the law.

But the law that emerged, because of political considerations and health concerns, differed from the original idea.

In the end, the program was divided into two parts for two different groups. One would be administered by the Labor Department and the other by the Energy Department.

The Labor program applied specifically to workers who were killed or sickened by exposure to beryllium, silica, or radiation. Those who qualified could collect a lump sum payment of up to $150,000 directly from the federal government.

That effort has drawn wide praise for its speed and efficiency.

To date more than $720 million has been paid to workers or their families. More than 95 percent of all claims have been completed.

Grassley plans to offer legislation that would transfer the program to the Department of Labor. That effort has bipartisan support in the Senate. Washington's two senators, Democrats Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray, support such a move.

"It's clear (DOE has) not been moving fast enough and it has impacted a lot of people in Washington state who have serious health care problems. I'm supportive of whatever it takes," Cantwell said.

Others, including Energy Department officials, oppose shifting the program to Labor. They say the program should stay in the department because it has access to all the health records, the people and the history. More money and such changes as reducing the number of physicians on each review panel from three to two, or in some cases even one, will allow the department to accelerate the pace, officials say.

And, they point out the program has had far more claims than expected. At the beginning, officials estimated that 3,000 people would file. By the time the program ends that number could mushroom to 30,000.

The Energy Department also complains that it can't attract enough physicians because Congress limits physicians' pay to $68 an hour while requiring an expertise in occupational medicine. Doctors with those qualifications routinely earn $150 an hour, officials say.

"We're preparing a plan that we believe ... can clear this backlog by 2006," said Davis, the Energy Department spokesman. "That may seem like a long time, but without the changes we're asking for it would be another four years," Davis said.

"We certainly hope Congress would back us up on that," he said, adding that when Congress provided more money last year the number of claims processed jumped from 20 a week to 60.

The department has supporters in Congress.

"I'm not sure (about moving the program to Labor). We're dealing with a pretty unique work force and it's fair to say which department is better able to understand that uniqueness that would be DOE," said Rep. Richard "Doc" Hastings, R-Wash., whose district includes Hanford. "I'm not sure that would be the panacea, and I think it's over-simplistic."

CASE STATUS

• Claims filed since 2001: 23,350
• Claims awaiting action: 22,054
• Claims that have been reviewed: 1,296
• Claims deemed ineligible: 1,038
• Claims accepted: 56
• Claims rejected: 53

P-I Washington correspondent Charles Pope can be reached at 202-263-6461 or charliepope@seattlepi.com

source: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/printer2/index.asp?ploc=t&refer=http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/166744_doecomp29.html 29mar04