For Every Life, a Story

The health insurance component of 9/11 has been more complicated. As we all know, those first responders who went to Ground Zero exposed themselves to a vicious cocktail of airborne toxins that were created when the Towers fell, and ever since, many of these first responders have developed serious chronic ailments related to their Ground Zero exposure. Two have even died and were added to the official list of 9/11 fatalities. In 2002, Felicia Dunn-Jones of the New York City medical examiner’s office died from a lung condition linked to exposure to Ground Zero dust, and was added to the official death toll in 2007. Likewise, Leon Heyward was added to the death toll in 2009; he died from Ground Zero-related lymphoma in 2008.

Many of the people who suffered Ground Zero-related illnesses contracted them in the course of their work, making those medical costs the province of workers compensation. This, in turn left a lot of first responders with a lot less coverage than they needed. In many cases, the coverage they had simply wasn’t enough, or they had no coverage whatsoever and were left facing towering medical bills they knew they could never pay. Thankfully, the James L. Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act that President Obama signed into law in January, and which began paying out money this July, has finally provided much-needed relief. Strangely, cancer is not listed among the official 9/11-related causes of illness, and that is questionable, given the large amount of anecdotal evidence linking cancer to 9/11. (Cancer rates among first responders are 19% higher than ordinary people. Why is that?) Hopefully, the federal health care funding for 9/11 first responders will expand to cover cancer as well before it is too late.

As somebody who comments often about the reputational issues the insurance industry faces, I am thankful that the problems facing first responders and their health care have not come back on the health insurance industry in the way that it could have. This is one of those cases where I had expected the public to turn on health insurers themselves but it never really came to pass. The coverage people had did what it was supposed to to. If any criticisms could be laid, it would be on the nature of the system itself – how much coverage costs, how much medical care itself costs, how an event like 9/11 blurs the line between work-related illness and nonwork-related illness, and that more people could not afford to have ample coverage of their own in addition to whatever programs they received from their employer or union. But that is a larger and more complicated issue than most are willing to contemplate, and so fingers pointed to the government to kick in and simply cover all medical costs for 9/11-related health problems. And that was a much more fair response than it would have been to demonize insurers themselves.

http://youtu.be/7k8HHfJe828

Ultimately, the whispers of unpaid life insurance and the complications of 9/11 health effects have done little to really harm the life and health industry. But I would like to think that for an industry such as this, being thankful for having dodged unfair accusations is hardly the best way to commemorate the 10th anniversary of 9/11 this Sunday. I have received few notices from insurers themselves on any special efforts to mark the anniversary, and I hope that is merely an oversight of insurers’ communications offices. Surely, it would be crass for life and health insurers to use 9/11 as a way to remind people of just how underinsured or uninsured they are, an event like 9/11 is the life and health industry’s version of a major hurricane. It is a deeply jarring and damaging event that left nobody untouched. The life and health industry is in the most challenging business of assigning a financial value to human life, something that we would prefer to think of as priceless. And if anything, this industry surely is in a privileged position to reach out to those who lost something on 9/11 and say, with a very genuine sincerity, that they understand how deep one’s loss really is.

I would imagine a lot of agents will be making special house calls this Sunday, and in the week that follows, just to make contact with beneficiaries, just to check in, and just to remember that this is ultimately a human business. It is about people, even when the events affecting them are so big as to make every individual fade into some kind of obscuring background. Not everybody understands this, but this industry does. It understands it in a very big way. And I hope that in the days to come, I will hear about it. I will certainly be eager to talk about it. Count on that.

One more thing: The videos I have posted throughout this column are part of an ongoing oral history effort by the Story Corps, an outfit in Brooklyn, NY that records personal stories. Their site has a lot of really fascinating anecdotes; some are funny, some are heartbreaking, but all are very human and very real. It is something I would love to take part in one day, just as soon as I can figure out what it is I want to say. Currently, the Story Corps is in the process of publishing a story for each of the people lost on 9/11, and the stories themselves are compelling, heartbreaking, and ultimately life-affirming in ways that so few other things can ever hope to be. I know the Story Corps accepts donations for its work; perhaps a L&H insurer that does not have any plans for commemorating 9/11 could do so by supporting this specific initiative. In any case, give these videos a watch; they are worth it. Just close your office door before you do. I sure had to.