The Department of Health and Human Services has reinstated staffing at a crucial health program dedicated to caring for 9/11 responders, following outcry from New York lawmakers over recent cuts.
This week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), operating under HHS, informed Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) that the World Trade Center Health Program is set to employ an additional 37 staff members. This adjustment will fulfill their target of 120 full-time employees, a response to inquiries from both Gillibrand and Senator Chuck Schumer’s office.
“During one of our nation’s darkest hours, 9/11 first responders and survivors risked everything,” Gillibrand shared with The Post. “The World Trade Center Health Program is our pledge to meet their healthcare needs born from that sacrifice.”
She continued, “I am glad to see the WTCHP increasing its staff, ensuring that our nation’s heroes receive the care they desperately need for the illnesses stemming from their courageous actions on 9/11.”
In the past three years alone, over 30,000 first responders and survivors of the September 11, 2001, attacks have sought assistance from the program, which currently supports 140,000 members.
Back in March, both Gillibrand and Schumer (D-NY) addressed a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., expressing their concerns regarding the reduction of staff at the WTC Health Program.
“While some staff have been rehired, not all have been allowed to return to work, and several individuals supporting the program’s work have been reassigned to other agencies without explanation,” the New York senators wrote on March 23.
At least two public health service corps officers were reassigned from the program — including the deputy director and another who was tasked with “HHS health care work in support of immigration enforcement efforts,” the letter noted.
After President Trump returned to the White House, the program’s total staff fell to just 84 and stayed there due to a hiring freeze that wasn’t lifted until last October.
That led to “delays in claims processing,” “the disruption of treatment authorizations,” “delays in the appeals process for program enrollment denials” and other backlogs forcing 9/11 survivors to wait sometimes up to a year for a resolution, Gillibrand and Schumer said.
Another $20 million in research contracts to study “cardiac, autoimmune, and cognitive issues related to toxic exposure on 9/11” was also delayed, they added.
“We are seven months away from the 25th Anniversary of that tragic day,” they pleaded, “you must allow the World Trade Center Health Program to do its job.”
Kennedy told NY1 earlier in April when asked about the staffing cuts, “We’re fixing it.”
The program got a shot in the arm in February with the passage of a $3 billion funding bill to fix a budget shortfall.
“This is what everybody wanted, and we got it,” Rep. Garbarino (R-NY) told The Post when the bill passed the House. Trump signed it into law in early February.
