How To Harass A Good Man To Death

A VETERAN FIREFIGHTER’S ARKANSAS LOCAL POLICE AND FIRE RETIREMENT SYSTEM TURNS ON HIM

One of the fascinating things about my job is that I have the privilege of being with people during some of their most challenging times.

Occasionally I meet someone extraordinary and inspiring.

Bud Planchon is one of the most remarkable people I know.

Three and a half years ago in March 2009, Bud was diagnosed with stage four colon cancer that had spread to his liver. He was told he had a life expectancy of two years. Bud went through chemotherapy and risky surgery removing 75 percent of his liver. His vital signs disappeared three times during that surgery.

Bud has faced the tough odds solidly. He takes it on with wonderful determination and hope. I see a lot of people who face such things with courage, but Bud is diff erent. Solid.

Realistic. Positive. Faithful.

If I am ever faced with such a life-threatening challenge, he’s my model. I’d like to have his strength of character.

Maybe he’s that way because of his training and experience. He’s a fi refi ghter, a 24-year veteran of the Springdale Fire Department.

He’s a Naval corpsman who was assigned to the Marines for two active tours in Desert Storm. Bud’s faced lifethreatening adversity before.

Firefighters are injured frequently by smoke and fire. They also are injured by exposure to haz-mat spill materials and dieselengine exhaust fumes in unventilated fi rehouses, like the one Bud worked in for more than 20 years.

In 42 states, including all of Arkansas’ neighbors, their retirement systems’ policies assume that when a fi refi ghter is diagnosed with colon cancer it is due to on-the-job exposure to carcinogens. There is ample research to back up that presumption. But not in Arkansas.

Bud’s illness led him to file for disability retirement benefits in June 2011. The Arkansas Local Police and Fire Retirement System, known as LOPFI, administers those benefi ts. Executive Director David Clark makes the decisions whether a disability qualifies as workrelated. Mr. Clark has made no decision on Bud’s case for more than a year. He’s held Bud in a limbo, from which Bud has no appeal.

Clark told The Arkansas Times the retirementsystem is “trying to obtain underlying medical information to show the causal link of the application” for duty disability retirement.

Bud and his wife, Jane, have fi led voluminous doctors’ reports from Fayetteville, Johns Hopkins, Mayo, M.D. Anderson and UAMS, and still Mr. Clark asks for more and drags out his decision.

At one point Mr. Clark asked for Bud’s entire file of medical records, which would have cost the Planchons about $10,000 until a sympathetic doctor came up with the idea he could order them and free the family from the expense.

Even after three reams of paper, LOPFI said it wasn’t enough information.

Bud’s wife Jane is convinced David Clark is coldly refusing to make any decision. She says he’s just waiting for Bud to die so the system doesn’t go on record Arkansas fi refi ghtersdo actually contract cancer because of their job-related exposures.

For Bud, this fi ght with LOPFI is harder than his fight with cancer. He and Jane would prefer for Mr.

Clark to turn them down than for him to continue to sit on the decision. At least then they could move to an appeal and have some fighting chance. But Mr. Clark has kept Bud’s application for benefits in his administrator’s pocket, and there is no one to appeal to.

Jane tried to reach out to LOPFI board members to let them know what their executive director is doing. She got scolded by the LOPFI attorney. The governor’s oftce passed her off to the board that she can’t communicate with.

Bud hasn’t been able to work since his retirement in August 2011. He’s had no income for more than a year. His extended family is paying for the $1,500 a monthinsurance premiums that keep him alive. Their life’s savings is gone, including the nest egg college fund for their beautiful 12-year-old daughter.

Meanwhile a year goes by and David Clark makes no decision, asking for more medical information, though the doctors and lawyers say he has everything there is.

The fi refi ghters’ retirement system should serve the fi refighters. Especially when they get so sick they must retire and die. Any fi refi ghter would want the system to bend over backwards to help a fellow in straits such as Bud.

It’s wrong to harass a sick man to death for proof of something that is an automatic decision in 42 states.

Time for LOPFI to do the right thing.

LOWELL GRISHAM IS AN EPISCOPAL PRIEST WHO LIVES IN FAYETTEVILLE.

Opinion, Pages 11 on 09/23/2012

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