Labor Secretary Hilda Solis avoids interviews and meetings with Contractor Groups

While Miranda Chiu,  U.S. Dept. of Labor, Chief, Branch of Policy, Regulations and Procedures, DOL/ESA/OWCP/DLHWC continues to Drop the DBA Ball

The Labor Department, which runs the system, required by a law known as the Defense Base Act, has exercised little oversight over the treatment provided to foreign workers. Despite promises to better enforce labor laws and widespread agreement that the contractor health care system is costly and ineffective , Labor Secretary Hilda Solis has largely avoided interviews and meetings with contractor groups seeking to reform the system.

Labor Day Message to Hilda Solis Secretary Dept of Labor

In the week before the holidays Pro Publica and T Christian Miller produced a run of excellent  articles on wounded Afghan and Iraqi Interpreters, which are part of their ongoing series about injured civilian contractors. In case you missed them during the holiday rush here they are again.

Our Articles onWounded Iraq andAfghan Interpreters-Now in Arabic

Malek Hadi was working with the U.S. military police when a homemade bomb detonated beneath his Humvee in September 2006. (Allison V. Smith/For The Los Angeles Times.)

Al Hayat [1], a pan-Arabic newspaper based in London, has translated and published [2] a ProPublica story [3] about the health care struggles faced by Iraqi and Afghan citizens wounded while working as interpreters for U.S. soldiers. Part of a continuing series on injured civilian contractors [4], the original story detailed how injured local interpreters suffered shoddy treatment in a system funded by American taxpayers to provide medical care and disability benefits. Many of the interpreters fled to the U.S. after becoming targets for the insurgency. Once here, they found themselves isolated and in poverty, fighting with private insurance companies who often denied claims for medical treatment. More than 360 Iraqi and Afghan interpreters died [5] while working as translators for defense firms contracted with the military—a larger death toll than any other nation’s armed forces except for the United States.

To supplement Al Hayat’s coverage, ProPublica is translating and posting two related stories. The first piece [6] concerns a doctor who treated hundreds of Iraqi interpreters while working for troubled insurance giant AIG in Jordan. Patients later complained that the doctor did not provide the appropriate treatment—a claim denied by the doctor. The English version is here [7]. A second story [8] takes a look at Iraqi support workers, who have sometimes settled their medical claims for a fraction of the total due to them by insurance providers. Here’s the original [9].