I just wanted to let you know the status of the asbestos legislation. We have the same bill filed in both the House and the Senate. The House Bill, which is being carried by Democratic Rep. Dennis Tyler of Muncie is HB 1128. In the Senate we have Republican Vanetta Becker carrying the Senate Bill 297, with Democrat Tim Lanane and Republican Brent Steele on the bill too. We are hoping that both chambers will move the bill quickly.
As I mentioned before, the key is getting this through and into law is the Republican Senate. We were hoping you might tell everyone you know to call their Senators and tell them to support the passage of SB 297. I have included a summary of what the bill does below. Now is the critical time to put the pressure on, so anything you can do to help would be greatly appreciated.
Senate Bill 297/House Bill 1128 Summary
· This bill is designed to change state law to recognize latent disease and give injured workers their rightful day in court.
· Specifically it is designed to give Hoosier workers who were exposed to asbestos the ability to sue those that made them ill and give them the ability to access workers compensation.
· For a businesses or manufacturer of an asbestos product to be held liable, it would have to be shown that the company knew about the dangers of asbestos (which most did) and exposed their workers anyway.
· Exposure to asbestos can lead to many different deadly forms of cancer - lung cancer and mesothelioma are most common.
· Each year about 50 Hoosiers become ill from exposure to asbestos. The vast majority of them worked in trades and in construction related jobs. There are also several cases of family members and spouses who are exposed (from laundering clothes or hugging dad when he came home from work).
· Cancers caused by asbestos are considered latent diseases. This means that while the cells of the body are damaged immediately upon exposure, it takes anywhere from 20-50 years after the initial exposure for the cells to mutate and to grow large enough to be detectable by doctors. At that point victims of asbestos have about 6 months to live..
· Under Indiana’s existing statue of repose, all workers are given 10 years from the date of their work place injury to file a lawsuit against the party that caused their injury. Indiana’s law does not recognize the latency of diseases and that is wrong and unfair.
· If a worker is injured on a construction job site today, he or she would have access to the courts as well as workers compensation - but workers who are injured by exposure to deadly toxins and don’t happen to become ill until years later are denied access to the courts and workers compensation because of some arbitrary statue.
·Indiana is the only state in the nation that denies workers access to workers compensation and access to the courts. In Indiana we have created two classes of injured workers.
· Victims of asbestos disease face terribly painful deaths. The tissue around their lungs become like sandpaper. What’s worse is that in addition to pain, many of these hard working people lose everything they have worked their lives for.
· Most of these families not only lose their main bread winner, most of them leave their families with mounds and mounds of medical bills. Many of these workers have insurance that won’t cover this type of care, plus because they cannot sue for damages nor are they entitled to workers compensation the family is left to pick up the burden – often time forcing them out of their homes and into bankruptcy..
· In addition, often times the state, through Medicaid, picks up the costs of care - making taxpayers foot the bill for someone irresponsible and negligent company's crime.
· In 2009 Rep. Tyler and Sen. Becker offered a bill to fix this situation for all individuals exposed to industrial toxins. It did not pass the Senate, instead it was referred to a summer study committee.
· In 2010, Rep. Tyler and Sen. Becker – having worked to meet the opposition’s concerns are offering a bill the focuses solely on asbestos disease.
· Their bill ( 2 bills - 1 Senate, 1 House) does the following:
o This would give workers exposed to asbestos their day in court
o This would fix the worker’s comp to allow any individual sick from exposure to any industrial toxins to be eligible for worker’s comp benefits. Currently many are not eligible because of the various time limitations in law. This fix says that anyone sick from exposure to industrial toxins would be given two years from the date of diagnosis to file a worker’s comp claim.
o This amends the Statue of Repose to allow individuals to sue the manufacturers of commercial products containing or using asbestos.
· This bill is not only the right thing to do morally; it is the right thing to do for Indiana workers and business. It punishes bad actors, protects workers and will help prevent this from continuing to happen.
· It will also help save the state Medicaid dollars - because as victims who sue can recover for damages and they will reimburse the state for any Medicaid cost they incurred. In other words, the companies will pay – not the taxpayers.
· And it is the right thing to do medically. When the statue of repose was created, we did not know about the latency of diseases like this. Now we do - and it is time we change our laws to recognize them too.
· The passage of this bill will indicate that we not only care about the number of jobs we have in Indiana, but the quality of those jobs and how our workers are treated.
· The opposition says that the people who have died from asbestos disease are 'just the cost of doing business' - but for these families it life altering and financially devastating. Indiana's working people deserve better.
· While the use of asbestos was outlawed in the 1970s, because of the latency period of the disease, it is estimated that we will hit a peak in asbestos disease sometime around 2106 - so fixing this now will help all those who are yet to die from this disease
PLEASE CALL YOUR STATE SENATOR AND ASK THEM TO SUPPORT SENATE BILL 297.
AND CALL YOUR STATE REPRESENTATIVE AND ASK THEM TO SUPPORT HOUSE BILL 1128.