Retired Miners Lament Trump’s Silence on Imperiled Health Plan -
By NOAM SCHEIBERAPRIL 19, 2017
UNIONTOWN, Pa. — Donald J. Trump made coal miners a central metaphor of his presidential campaign, promising to “put our miners back to work”
and look after their interests in a way that the Obama administration did not.
As a result, he said, “I got four of those speeches: ‘If you work here, you work your 20 years,
you are guaranteed insurance for yourself and your family for the rest of your life.’”
Since he retired in 2001, that insurance, along with Medicaid and Medicare, has kept him and his wife, Rhonda, 60, afloat.
Last fall, Mr. VanSickle priced out a private insurance plan
that would provide roughly comparable benefits for him and his wife, who takes about a dozen separate medications to treat lupus and rheumatoid arthritis.
Unless Congress intervenes by late April, government-funded health benefits will abruptly lapse for more than
20,000 retired miners, concentrated in Trump states that include Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia.