9/11 Victim Fund Will Cut Payouts By Up To 70 Percent As Claims Surge

There has been a surge of new claims for compensation from 9/11 victims, mainly due to recent cancer diagnosis' and other conditions that may be contributed to contact with debris and particulate matter from the "collapse" of the Twin Towers and Building 7. It must be somewhat difficult to prove such a claim, but apparently enough have been successful that payouts are going to be cut significantly.

What do you think of this? Should payouts remain at their current levels and take money from elsewhere? A Grand Jury will be hearing 9/11 evidence in the coming months that has been claimed will topple the official version of what happened on that day. It will be interesting to find out if anything ever comes of that! (Find out more about the Grand Jury: HERE

UNEDITED SOURCE TITLE:
‘We recognize this is horribly unfair.’ 9/11 victim fund will cut payouts by up to 70% as claims surge

The September 11th Victim Compensation Fund plans to cut future payouts in half — and in some cases by as much as 70 percent — as it struggles with a surge of new claims from those who have gotten sick and the families of those who have died, officials announced Friday. The fund was opened by the federal government in 2011 to compensate for deaths and illnesses linked to toxic exposure at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and in Shanksville, Pa., after terrorists crashed four hijacked airliners in 2001. To date, the $7.3 billion fund has paid about $5 billion to roughly 21,000 claimants. About 700 were for deaths that occurred long after the attacks. Now, faced with more than 19,000 additional unpaid claims, the math has become painful. “We recognize that this is horribly unfair, particularly because we have spent the balance of this program paying claims at full value, and claimants who are coming in now are going to receive less,” said Rupa Bhattacharyya, who administers the fund. “Unfortunately, the law really leaves us no choice. This is the fairest way we could come up with to do it.”

Bhattacharyya warned in October that the fund’s balance was falling while claims were skyrocketing, and that claims received after Feb. 1 may not receive the full amounts given to earlier claimants. That prompted another rush of thousands of claims, yet even that approach was overly optimistic. Officials announced Friday that any pending claims, including those received before Feb. 1, will be paid at 50 percent of their prior value. Valid claims received after that date will be paid at just 30 percent. The fund is scheduled to stop taking claims in December 2020. “I’m devastated, and the 9/11 community is devastated,” said John Feal, a construction worker who was injured at Ground Zero and has become an activist. Congress, he argued, “put an arbitrary deadline on illnesses that don’t have deadlines. . . . This is un-American, unpatriotic and inhumane.”

Well, it's one thing if we're talking about people who just happened to be there when it happened and had no choice but to be exposed. The people who chose to go down there and sift through all that toxic debris for months just to be a good person or to find some scraps of DNA from their loved ones for "closure" did so of their own free will.

It was pretty obvious the whole area was a nightmare for your health and if they were going to be down there, they should have been wearing high grade respirators the whole time. Not just cheap little dust masks. Many of them were not wearing any kind of protective gear at all. That's just dumb. Sorry. I have worn a respirator and I know it sucks to wear one for long hours. I also know that dying of cancer and lung disease sucks.

Also, there should have been limits on how long anyone could be down there regardless of protective gear. Of course it would have taken a lot longer but a lot of this tragedy of people dying years later didn't have to happen if they'd just applied some common sense. Finding someone's DNA when you already know they're dead is not worth dying for yourself.

a reply to: seattlerat

As someone who lives in New York area we have been bombarded with non stop ads by ambulance chasing
shysters asking for everyone who was in lower Manhattan that day to fill claims for illness

Apparently the settlement fund is being flooded with claims from these ads

FYI: Brave NYPD First Responder who testified to Congress last week, has been taken, by Bin Laden/Saudis.


R.I.P. Luis Alvarez: www.foxnews.com...

a reply to: carewemust

I saw that yesterday and thought to myself, "He was only a couple years older than I am". It's a shame that the death toll from those attacks will continue to rise- no doubt there are other reasons other than exposure to cancer causing agents that will take survivors and their families alike. I would venture to guess that drug/alcohol abuse and suicide rates might be higher for them, too...