A jury has acquitted W.R. Grace & Company and its former executives of knowingly exposing mine workers and the residents of Libby, Montana to asbestos.

“We at Grace are gratified by today’s verdict and thank the men and women of the jury who were open to hearing the facts,” said Fred Festa, the company’s CEO in a statement obtained by CNN.

Prosecutors had alleged the mining company conspired to “knowingly release” asbestos for decades. “It was a purpose of the conspiracy to conceal and misrepresent the hazardous nature of the…asbestos contaminated vermiculite, thereby enriching defendants and others,” read the indictment.

Best estimates are that Libby residents suffered 200 excess deaths and 1,000 illnesses due to asbestos exposure.

The fine, dusty stuff had blanketed everything in town from big rigs to baseball fields. Libby residents testified that Grace never told them about health risks associated with the stuff.

Grace never denied that asbestos came from its vermiculite mine in town, nor that it had sickened and killed many, but it vigorously denied a conspiracy.

In fact, it claimed that it acted responsibly once it became aware of the problem, and that it paid millions to cover the asbestos-related medical bills of Libby residents.

Asbestosis causes numerous illnesses including mesothelioma, a rare cancer that originates in the lining of the lungs, abdomen and heart.

Grace faced fines of up to $280 million, and certain Grace executives were looking at jail time had the verdict gone the other way.

“I don’t see how they could have gotten out of it,” said Steven Schnetter, who worked at the mine for 17 years before developing asbestosis, a lung disease caused by exposure to asbestos fibers.

Readmissions to hospitals, defined as a second admission within 30 days of hospital discharge for the same or a similar medical condition, cost Medicare $17 billion per year.

Many readmissions can be prevented by coordinating post-discharge care more effectively and implementing simple home monitoring programs.

The problem is that when hospitals implement such programs, it sets them back financially. Payers like Medicare reap all the benefits. 

Take Park Nicollet Health Services, for example. The Minnesota-based hospital and clinic system has long-since established a reputation for its innovations in the quality of care. Four years ago, the provider began spending $750,000 per annum on nurses and special software to reduce readmissions for congestive heart failure.

The program reduced such readmissions from 16% to 4%.

The program saved Medicare $5 million per year, but Park Nicollet received not a cent for its efforts. In fact, fewer admissions for the condition actually cut revenues for the intrepid quality leader.

“We’ve kept it up out of a sense of moral obligation to these patients, but we’re getting killed,” Park Nicollet’s chief executive David Wessner told the New York Times.

“We have a reimbursement system for health care that is not aligned with providing high-quality care,” said Barry Straube, Medicare’s CMO. “Unequivocally, there has to be payment reform.”

Michael Connelly, chief executive of Catholic Healthcare, which has similar programs, says payers need to bundle payments for a hospital stay and the follow-up care.

“One of my frustrations is it’s taking so long to do this,” he told the Times. 

“Hospitals who say they are penalized for doing the right thing are right,” concurred Robert Berenson, a policy analyst at the Urban Institute. “If we can’t do this, we can’t do much of anything in health reform.”