Patrick Leahy: “at the heart of most arguments against the funding structure provided under the FAIR Act are allegations that…”

“at the heart of most arguments against the funding structure provided under the FAIR Act are allegations that predictions about the number of claims expected to come to the fund have been underestimated. Over the past 5 years, the Judiciary Committee received extensive testimony from a variety of auditing companies, economic analysts and existing asbestos trusts about claims projections. Three years ago, a leading actuary with Tillinghast-Towers Perrin testified that ``$108 billion appears to be more than adequate'' while other firms estimated that $130 billion would be sufficient to cover the trust fund expenses. It is not surprising that projections about future behavior vary from firm to firm because the assumptions are different. Some professional analysts have estimated that we will experience significantly less than $140 billion in claims and others have estimated that we will experience more. Last week's document produced by some staff on the Budget Committee assumes that $160 billion will be paid out in claims based on a worst case scenario of one projection of claims activity. The minority staff document circulated last week adopted claims projections plainly at odds with the experience of the Manville trust and without consideration for the medical criteria in S. 852. The overwhelming majority of nonmalignant claims paid by the Manville trust go to unimpaired claimants.…”