Care for 9/11 Responders Is Piecemeal: Plan for Processing Center On Hold, Funding Uncertain

[DeepModem Mom]

Source: Washington Post

By Robin Shulman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, January 28, 2008; Page A06

NEW YORK -- As President Bush gives his State of the Union speech Monday, there will be one man in the audience who plans to sit quietly and watch, his very presence a form of protest. Joseph Libretti, 51, is sick. He has been diagnosed with chronic lung disease since volunteering after Sept. 11, 2001, to cut through steel to remove bodies from the gritty, smoking pile of detritus of the World Trade Center. Now, too weak to return to his job as an ironworker, he mostly keeps close to his Pennsylvania home.

He is among a group of responders demanding a coherent national program to provide local medical treatment for Ground Zero workers from outside New York City who answered the call to help after the terrorist attacks. An existing program was effectively halted in December, when the federal government canceled its search for a contractor to process medical reimbursements. "The president should take care of the workers," Libretti said during a telephone interview in which he frequently coughed and lost his breath. "If he sees me and other first responders, he'll know we're there."

His protest was helped by Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.), who has made medical care for Ground Zero workers her cause. "What kind of a nation are we?" Maloney said. "What kind of a message are we sending to future responders? 'You are rushing into tragedy, and we are not going to be there.'"...

***

People came from all 50 states to help in rescue, recovery and cleanup at Ground Zero, and the federal government had been searching for a contractor to run a business center to manage their health care since then. The center would help clinics across the country treat and monitor first responders, streamline existing payment and pharmaceutical plans, and pay medical bills.

On Dec. 13, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention canceled a request for proposals to establish the business center. Without the center, there would be no entity to offer medical referrals to responders far from New York City, or any single scheme for the government to reimburse their doctors or to streamline pharmaceutical reimbursements.,,,

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/27/AR2008012701629.html?hpid=sec-nation

[pokercat999]

1. Where is Rudy on this? Oh yeah, running for prez and soon

to be back to work doing whatever it is that he does to pretend that he is "working" when he is actually unemployed. Jesus I'm starting to sound like Yogi Berra.

Time for a road trip AC here I come.

[aquart]

2. Yah. They're waiting till they all die.

Then they'll get right on it.

Do any of our candidates offer a plan in place to make sure this NEVER happens again?

[aldo]

3. Since they didn't care about the original 3000 killed, why care about the responders?

Come on people, this is a cloth woven from a single thread. We are all just dumb stupid cattle to them (in the words of Kissinger quoted by Woodward). 9/11 was a inside job fraud, to set up a fraudulent "war on terror," to set up a police state (with many of us clamoring for our rights and freedoms to be taken away).

Think about it, the shabby treatment of our veterans in VA hospitals, exposing our own troops to depleted uranium ammunitions, killing 100,000s of Iraqis, no border security, selling our ports to foreigners, passing out TSA pork to the heartland. They know there's no terrorist threat, they are the terrorists. It's not the Islamofascists, it's the Republofascists. Republicans, traitors to America.

[Deny and Shred]

4. Mission Accomplished

Completely agree. Reward your friends and the wealthy, starve the budget of its 'liberal' aspects, install Big Brother, corrupt all institutions so they must comply, set up foreign policy apparatus that is outside the law, buddy up to foreign governments that can aid them (not US) in the future, betray most traditional 'American' values (other than greed of course).

There must be casualties to galvanize American spirit for these ventures; therefore; habitually wrap self in flag and pay lip service to the heroes. The quality of life of the heroes after the event, sweep that under the rug.

Anyone who questions their care - vilify. After all, how could they have added 'Support the Troops' to their robotic vernacular for so long without it being true?

The bigger the lie ... Kissinger, sadly, IS absolutely right.