Responding to a purported move to omit asbestos-related Medicare assistance for Libby residents from the final health-care reform bill, Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont. on Thursday said the provision he fought to include is about “stepping up to fulfill a promise” made long ago.

According to Politico.com, President Barack Obama is pushing Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to strip the final health-care bill of the “narrow deals aimed at appeasing specific senators.”

That includes Baucus’ provision that the bill include Medicare assistance for people exposed to asbestos from the Libby vermiculite mine.

Although the language in the bill applies to victims of any government-declared public health emergency, Libby was the first community ever to receive the emergency declaration in 2009.

“In 1980, Congress went through a comprehensive and transparent process to pass a law on the federal response to environmental disasters,” Baucus said in a statement.

“That law said that the federal government has a responsibility to clean up those disasters, and in the worst cases, the federal government has a responsibility to provide screening and medical care to the victims.”

Baucus said the provision meets the responsibility that was established 30 years ago.

“I can’t understand why anyone would want to make it impossible to meet our obligation to deal with this tragedy,” he said. “More than 290 people have died from asbestos-related disease in Libby. This type of tragedy could happen to any town, anywhere across the country, and it breaks my heart that it happened in Montana, to Montanans.”

The public health emergency provision is not a special deal, Baucus insisted.

“For 30 years, the law has been clear that when a public health emergency is declared, screening and medical care services are to be provided to the people who were exposed,” he said. “And for 30 years, no public health emergencies were declared, so the federal government was not obligated to determine the best way to provide that care.”

 Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or by e-mail at lhintze@dailyinterlake.com