BuzzFeed - Coal companies are supposed pay compensation to miners who contract the dreaded disease, but the companies have devised ways to get out of paying. The bill attempts to shut down those schemes. Roger Cook, a former coal miner with black lung, in 2013. Charles Bertram/Lexington Herald-Leader / MCT Two coal-state senators plan to introduce sweeping legislation Thursday to reform the federal program meant to provide benefits to miners suffering from black lung disease. For almost four decades, federal law has required coal companies to compensate miners who contract the debilitating and often deadly disease caused by breathing in coal dust. But companies have deployed strategies to avoid paying miners: Doctors working for coal companies have systematically misdiagnosed miners with black lung as having other diseases, and lawyers fighting miners' claims have withheld evidence that the miners did, in fact, have black lung. These schemes were exposed last year in a major investigation by
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