WTC responders have eyes on health care bill

For three months after the collapse of the World Trade Center towers, Jared Ring worked at Ground Zero, helping remove debris as part of bucket brigades and treating recovery workers for injuries.

Saturday, the former paramedic supervisor, now a resident of Hampton Bays, was among those who filled St. Paul's Chapel - just across Church Street from Ground Zero - for World Trade Center Responder Day.

"Many of us are now, years later, starting to feel the effects of 9/11," said Ring, 38, who said he retired from his job with Metrocare EMS in 2004 because of respiratory problems and post-traumatic stress disorder that he associates with Sept. 11. "I have trouble breathing."

Ring also is keeping an eye on legislation in Congress that would provide long-term health care and medical monitoring to people who suffer health effects from their work at Ground Zero.

"I would definitely take advantage of the program . . . because it seems more recently that symptoms are getting worse for people," Ring said. "My concern is that something that starts as a cough could become something more serious."

Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-Manhattan/Queens), speaking at opening ceremonies before responders and their families, urged passage of the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act before the Fourth of July.

Maloney is a primary sponsor of the bill, which would provide mandatory funding for medical monitoring and treatment programs for emergency responders, cleanup and recovery workers and affected New York City residents. It also would reopen the 9/11 victims compensation fund, which was closed to new claims in 2003.

"We've got to save them [responders] and their families now," Maloney said. "By not funding comprehensive health care, we are leaving thousands and thousands of men and women behind."

Maloney said the measure, which passed the House's Energy and Commerce Committee on May 25, has enough votes to pass when it reaches the full House.

In separate action related to responders' health concerns, lawyers for thousands of Ground Zero responders suing over health effects agreed with the city and its federally funded insurance company in March to settle the cases for between $575 million and $657 million.

But U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein said he wouldn't approve the deal unless lawyers' fees were slashed and the amount for victims was dramatically increased.

After efforts to rework the deal floundered, the city in April appealed to the Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, arguing that Hellerstein lacked the power to block a private settlement and was overreaching. The appeal has not been heard, and a request is pending that Hellerstein stay all activity on the case until the appeal is resolved. But the judge has reported that, on a parallel track, "intensive negotiations" aimed at trying to restructure the settlement are still occurring.

Critics of the pending deal say that victims who accept it would have to forgo more generous benefits that would be available through the responders' fund that would be created under Maloney's bill.

With John Riley