Posted by
Shogrensus on Monday, April 30, 2007 2:12:09 AM
After the break the women continue their discussion with Dr. Moline. Interestingly, she is studying the effects of the toxin exposure on the first responders. She needs money to continue her studies.
***
Rosie: Dr. Moline you were saying that in order to continue your studies about the effects of the 9/11 rescue on people’s lungs you are going to need funding.
Moline: Right. Not only to continue to monitor their health, we’re going to need to monitor the health of these responders for the next 20-30 years. But we also need to treat them. We can’t just monitor their health, we need to treat them and now we finally received federal funding in the fall. That was a start
***
I have always thought that doctors who treated patients were also monitoring them as a part of their medical treatment. Who knew that a doctor needed a separate funding stream to do the monitoring?
Dr. Moline knows that she is going to need money for the next 20 -30 years to monitor the health of these first responders. That should pretty much take her clear through to her retirement.
The implication in her comments is that before there was federal funding to treat these first responders, they had no access to treatment. The federal funding meant they could now, finally, receive medical care.
Why didn’t these people have health insurance? If they did have health insurance, why isn’t it paying for their care? Even if the government had to come in and pick up co-pays, that would be far cheaper then paying for all of their care.
They go on:
***
Moline: In November. We started, we had some philanthropic funding that funding is now over. Federal funding is in place but that’s not going to last through the end of the year.
Joy: How much did you get?
Moline: We at Mt. Sinai got about $17 million but program wise about $50 million was given for funding and this was for fire department has a sister program to the Mount Sinai consortium and there are a number of medical centers that have programs to treat responders and also there is a national program
***
Just some quick calculations here: $50 million would be $2000 for each of the 25,000 first responders they think are sick. Obviously, some are seriously ill and others have a chronic cough. $2000 is an average.
She is only just getting started in the quest for dollars.
***
Rosie: Now wait a second. Are they treated for free or are they- is this covered by their insurance or do they pay out of pocket to try to get better from this?
Moline: Currently they are able to be covered under the federal program, totally covered. Everything is free- there is no co-pays, no out of pocket expenses for their World Trade Center related problems. That money is estimated to run out this year and possibly this fiscal year- the government fiscal year- so we’re concerned that we are not going to have enough money to continue to treat the patients that are now finally getting the care that they need. Man y of them couldn’t afford the care that they needed.
Joy: How much do you need?
Moline: There’s been a lot of number crunching and the numbers have estimated to be at $250 million a year to cover all responders for all of the World trade Center problems. In New York City, including the fire department and also those responders nationwide.
Rosie: And that money has been earned by every single person who went down there to help and I know the fire fighters talk about their metal boots burning through the fire fighter boots – they had to get new boots as they burned through those toxins that were ingested into your bodies. We have to stand up as a nation and support these men and women, we do
***
More number crunching is definitely necessary now.
$250 million breaks down into $10,000 per first responder person per year.
$250 million, every year for 20 – 30 years is $5 billion to $7.5 billion dollars, not adjusted for inflation or rising health care costs. This is $200,000 to $300,000 per person.
This is a tremendous amount of money and there needs to be some clear oversight. While Dr. Moline may be the most competent doctor in the world, she clearly has a financial stake in the outcome of the quest for dollars. As liberals always tell us, money corrupts. She can't be unconditionally trusted unless we can verify all that she says to be in fact true.