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A volunteer with the American Red Cross, Wolff went to the World Trade Center site to help victims and their families get food vouchers and pay bills. After three weeks of breathing in a toxic cloud of crushed concrete, asbestos, lead and fumes from burned jet fuel, Wolff is now fully disabled — one of thousands struggling with a constellation of ailments common to those who helped victims and pulled bodies from the wreckage seven years ago.
Adding to her troubles: The 51-year-old Wolff has had to fight to get insurance coverage for her prescriptions, medical appointments and upcoming surgeries, even though Congress has set aside money specifically to care for her and the estimated 4,000 other responders living outside of the New York City metropolitan area. (Responders living near Ground Zero are cared for at a network of New York City-area hospitals.)
The problem began in June, Wolff and others say, when Logistics Health Inc. of La Crosse, headed by former U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson, won an $11 million federal contract to provide medical care and health monitoring from the agency Thompson once led — a decision that continues to raise eyebrows on Capitol Hill.
Before June 1, responders living outside New York were served by a small nonprofit funded by the Red Cross with donations it got to help 9/11 victims. Five months into Logistics Health’s one-year federal contract, just a fraction of those patients have received the required medical monitoring, according to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.
And while NIOSH officials say all of the patients, such as Wolff, now receive needed treatment, the claim is difficult to verify. Responders come in and out of the program at different times, depending on their health, said Fred Blosser, spokesman for the federal agency.
As of last week, 187 patients actively were being treated, Blosser said. In addition, he said 274 patients — out of 4,000 responders — have received testing and medical monitoring services.
Dr. Jim Melius, chairman of the World Trade Center Medical Monitoring and Treatment Steering Committee, which coordinates care for 9/11 responders, said some patients may simply have dropped out of the program during the rocky transition to LHI. He said HHS should cancel the contract.
“I just don’t have any confidence that they (LHI) have the capacity or the understanding to do this,” Melius said.
LHI spokeswoman Tracey Armstrong referred all questions to NIOSH, saying its federal contract prohibits the company from answering media questions. But Blosser said the contract only requires the company submit to NIOSH for review any statistics it plans to give to the press.
Blosser said he’s aware of the criticism that LHI is moving too slowly.
“We will be monitoring that information as time goes on to make sure that progress is being made and that responders who want to receive treatment ... are being served,” he said.
Delays, problems
Anne Marie Baumann, senior vice president of the Fealgood Foundation, which helps injured and ailing 9/11 responders, said she’s heard from about three dozen responders throughout the country, including Wolff, about problems getting reimbursement from LHI.
“All of them were receiving services, and then all the services stopped, just like that,” Baumann said.
U.S. Rep. Carolyn Maloney, the Democratic congresswoman representing Queens and Manhattan who has spearheaded the effort to care for 9/11 responders, said it’s not clear where the blame for the delay lies, “but even administration officials admit that the start of this program was anything but smooth.”
After LHI took over this summer, Wolff said her claims for reimbursement for expensive cough medicine and an inhaler came back as denied. And it wasn’t until mid-October — more than four months into the one-year contract — the company agreed to pay for her treatment for a respiratory ailment that afflicts many 9/11 responders.
Wolff, who lives just 15 minutes’ drive from the Logistics Health office in downtown La Crosse, said she doesn’t want to single out anyone for blame.
But John Feal, founder of the Fealgood Foundation, points the finger directly at Wisconsin’s former governor, who also is LHI president.
Thompson spokesman Jason Denby referred questions about the contract to LHI. But he said Thompson — who serves on boards and in management and consulting positions at 22 companies — “has been working closely with the team (at LHI) to ensure that the contract is carried out properly.”
Thompson at LHI
Thompson, 66, came to LHI just after leaving in December 2004 as President George W. Bush’s secretary of Health and Human Services, which includes NIOSH. Thompson quickly assembled a large portfolio of private sector positions, including partner in one of Washington, D.C.’s most influential law firms, board directorships on medical device and pharmaceutical companies he once regulated, and as an executive with Deloitte & Touche, a major federal contractor that provides health care consulting services.
In March 2005, Thompson was named president of LHI, which provides “customized health care solutions” for private companies and the federal government using a network of medical and dental providers. Armstrong declined to say how much the company pays Thompson.
Since the former HHS secretary joined LHI, the company has seen its federal contracting business skyrocket. According to OMB Watch, a nonprofit group that tracks government contracting, the company of 400 employees has gone from $19.9 million in federal contracts in 2003 to $104.8 million in 2007, including part of the first year of a five-year contract to provide health and dental services to military reservists worth an estimated $790 million.
In at least two published interviews, LHI founder and chairman Don Weber has credited the company’s growth to Thompson’s government connections.
“Tommy is able to make a phone call — and then we get in front of people who make decisions,” Weber told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in February 2006.
“Tommy really is able to get us in to see the right people, the decision-makers,” Weber told to the La Crosse Tribune in September 2006.
Denby insisted Thompson has never contacted anyone at his former agency to discuss business.
Armstrong didn’t respond to interview requests with Weber.
9/11 contract
How Thompson’s company won the contract to provide 9/11 responder care has come under scrutiny. Last fall, the administration solicited bids to provide medical and pharmacy care for ailing responders living outside of New York City. In December, a few days before bids were due, HHS canceled the request. Knut Ringen, a Seattle consultant, said his client, Zenith Administrators and QTC of Diamond Bar, Calif., was ready to submit a bid.
Suspicious about the change, one New York City congressman held a hearing in January to try to force HHS to explain why the process had been scuttled. The agency declined to send a representative before the House Subcommittee on Government Management, Organization and Procurement.
Blosser said the process was halted because it wasn’t clear how much the government would pay for patients with health insurance, although Congress had appropriated $108 million for that purpose.
U.S. Rep. Ed Towns, chairman of the subcommittee, didn’t buy that explanations.
“First they said that the bidders were confused. Well, we talked to bidders ... and they said they were ready to go,” the Democrat from Brooklyn said at the hearing. “Then the administration said there wasn’t enough funding. Well, how could they know that before the bids came in?”
In March, the HHS’ Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which includes NIOSH, issued a new request for proposals. LHI was among four bidders. Ringen prepared a second proposal, this time just from Zenith. He said LHI’s $11 million proposal was several million dollars less than the other three bids. Blosser declined to say how much the other proposals would have cost, citing federal contract rules.
“We could not do the project on the budget LHI proposed — at least and do it responsibly,” Ringen said.
Not ready
Before LHI got the contract, the nonprofit Association of Occupational and Environmental Clinics provided health care services for 9/11 responders. After the contract was awarded in May, Katherine Kirkland, the association’s executive director, said her group tried to ease the transition.
“We offered to talk with them (LHI) and work with them, and they said they had everything under control and they’d get back to us,” she said.
Kirkland said she tried unsuccessfully to contact LHI as dozens of patients began calling her about lack of service. Finally, she said, the association and the Red Cross agreed to continue paying medical claims for patients beyond the June 30 scheduled end of their program.
Kirkland said LHI isn’t solely to blame. “I just don’t think they (LHI) understood and I don’t think the federal government understood what was involved in providing treatment for these people,” she said.
laxlocal wrote on Nov 22, 2008 9:46 PM: