US Senate's Frist plans asbestos offer this week
Published by MAC on 2004-07-14
Attempts by the Bush administration joined by companies producing asbestos - the world's deadliest mined industrial material - to fix a limit to victim compensation payments, notches one stage towards disgraceful fruition.
US Senate's Frist plans asbestos offer this week
Planet Ark (Reuters)
July 14, 2004
Washington - A Republican counter-proposal on the size of a multibillion-dollar fund for asbestos victims could come within days, the U.S. Senate majority leader said this week.
"We'll have a pretty specific response," Sen. Bill Frist told reporters, adding that he hoped to offer his plan for the privately financed fund by mid-week.
The Tennessee Republican said he had been working with companies that face lawsuits stemming from asbestos, as well as their insurers, to develop the counter-proposal to Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle.
Last month Daschle, of South Dakota, suggested setting up a national fund of $141 billion to compensate asbestos victims.
Asbestos was widely used for fireproofing and insulation until the 1970s. Scientists say inhaled fibers are linked to cancer and other diseases. Companies have paid an estimated $70 billion on some 730,000 asbestos personal injury claims, according to the RAND Institute for Civil Justice.
Several senators have been working for more than a year on legislation that would set up a victims' compensation fund, to be financed by asbestos litigation defendants and insurers, while ending the right of victims to sue in court.
Frist spoke to reporters after delivering a speech on health care at the National Press Club in Washington. He gave no details of his pending asbestos proposal. Before Daschle's offer last month, sources close to the talks said Frist had suggested a fund size of about $131 billion.
Frist and Daschle's negotiations have revived the asbestos fund idea after it seemed to collapse early in May with a failed effort by a senior appeals court judge to mediate among asbestos companies, insurers and labor representatives.
Representatives of organized labor have said they think it will cost at least $149 billion to set up a privately financed fund to pay asbestos claims stretching into the future.
But companies with outstanding asbestos liabilities and insurers have so far been unwilling to pledge that much money to the proposed fund. One company, auto parts maker Federal-Mogul Corp. said in April it couldn't afford the contribution it would have been asked to make under an earlier Frist proposal for a fund of up to $124 billion.