Tiny Percentage of Ground Zero Responders Receiving Compensation, Treatment for Health Issues

[Omaha Steve]

Source: We Party Patriots

For Ground Zero responders still dealing with health problems from the toxic air that surrounded the 9/11 attacks site, government relief has been slow to come and complicated to obtain. After Congress set up a $2.8 billion compensation fund in 2011, nearly 55,000 people registered for help with their non-cancer health issues. These issues range from respiratory illnesses to digestive problems. But according to the New York Daily News, registering for help and receiving it have been two different things:

Advocates project that only about half have covered ailments and will qualify.

More than 11,000 registrants have submitted eligibility forms, and the fund has made decisions on about 2,500 of them, deeming 871 claimants eligible.

Awards totalling $27.2 million have been pledged to the 112 claimants who got final decisions.

FULL story at link.

About the Author: Chaz Bolte
Chaz Bolte is a native of Pittsburgh, PA where he attended Slippery Rock University. He currently contributes to WePartyPatriots, Addicting Info, Secret Party Room, and Football Nation. You can follow him on Twitter @ChazBolte


Read more: http://wepartypatriots.com/wp/2013/12/05/tiny-percentage-of-ground-zero-responders-receiving-compensation-treament-for-health-issues/

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[SoapBox]

2. It's a national disgrace.

[lunasun]

3. That is a sicko way to treat our nation's rescuers and reclaimers after 911

Sicko
I remember the 911 responders who needed to go to Cuba for help after 911 and being shoved out the back door here.

[Martak Sarno]

4. Pre-existing condition?

Wouldn't nearly all of those be covered by the ACA now?

Come to think of it, how about the vets who were exposed to Agent Orange?

Shouldn't this new law cover them?

[bananas]

5. Bush's EPA head Christine Todd Whitman told "conscience-shocking" lies about the air quality.

A judge said her lies were "without question conscience-shocking":

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Christine_Todd_Whitman

Christine Todd Whitman (Christie) ... was appointed by George W. Bush as Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in January 2001. She resigned from the EPA on May 21, 2003.

<snip>

Misleading New Yorkers post-9/11

In February 2006, a federal judge found Whitman guilty of making "'misleading statements of safety' about the air quality near the World Trade Center in the days after the Sept. 11 attack." The judge further found that Whitman "may have put the public in danger," according to the New York Times (Julia Preston, "Public Misled on Air Quality After 9/11 Attack, Judge Says," February 3, 2006).

"The allegations in this case of Whitman's reassuring and misleading statements of safety after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks are without question conscience-shocking," said Judge Deborah A. Batts. As early as September 13, 2001, the EPA put out press releases declaring "no significant levels" of asbestos dust, when agency officials knew there were significant hazardous emissions. Judge Batts' ruling allowed a 2004 class action lawsuit against Whitman and other EPA officials and the entire agency, which was filed on behalf of residents and schoolchildren from downtown Manhattan and Brooklyn, to go forward.

Whitman's post-9/11 statements are further called into question by "the appearance of a conflict between Whitman's responsibility to the public and her own family's financial affairs," wrote Laura Flanders in her book "Bushwomen." "As the former Governor of New Jersey, Whitman owned bonds worth between $15,000 and $50,000 in the New York/New Jersey Port Authority -- the owner of the World Trade Center site and the major liable party in the affair. Her husband, John R. Whitman, formerly a Citigroup vice-president, manages hundreds of millions of dollars in the banking giant's assets, and Travelers Insurance, a Citigroup subsidiary, stood to lose multiple millions in Manhattan medical claims." Flanders gives the Whitmans' investment in Citigroup as being "up to $250,000 in stock," adding that "John Whitman received a six-figure bonus from Citigroup as recently as 2000."

In June 2007, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that "federal environmental officials misled Lower Manhattan residents about the extent of contamination in their condominiums and apartments after the collapse of the World Trade Center," the New York Times reported. In particular, "the Environmental Protection Agency did not accurately report the results of a residential cleanup program in 2002 and 2003." [18]

The preliminary GAO report was made public during a hearing of the Subcommittee on Superfund and Environmental Health of the U.S. Senate's Committee on Environment and Public Works. Whitman was scheduled to testify at another Congressional hearing the following week, "about her handling of the disaster and the way she communicated the level of risk to the public." [19]

<snip>

[ConcernedCanuk]

6. Well, at least the USA is consistent

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.
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It treats it's war vets like garbage also.

CC