Cancer Care

Firefighters who respond to a blaze can find themselves rushing into noxious, cancer-causing smoke, soot or fumes. When they’re stricken with the disease as a result, their battle often ends up in court.

No more, advocates say.

With Gov. Jim Douglas’ signature Tuesday, Vermont firefighters will have the benefit of the doubt from state government when they file for workers’ compensation benefits after a cancer diagnosis. Unless proved otherwise, it will be presumed that the cancer was caused by their job.

“The burden has shifted to the employer now, off of (the firefighter’s) family,” said Matt Vinci, president of the Professional Fire Fighters of Vermont.

The law was the second major victory for the increasingly politically powerful firefighters group. Last year, the Legislature passed a law that gave firefighters the presumption that a heart attack suffered within hours of being on duty was caused by the job.

“We all appreciate the tremendous contribution that the fire service makes to Vermonters,” Douglas said at a bill-signing ceremony at the Montpelier firehouse.

The Vermont League of Cities and Towns, which provides insurance to many communities, says the new law likely will mean a steep increase in workers’ compensation insurance premiums.

“Right now, if you’re a pure volunteer, we charge $40 a year for workers’ comp,” said Steve Jeffrey, executive director of the league. “We’re afraid, from the statistics from studies we’ve done, it looks like we’re going to have to collect $455 per firefighter to pay for the costs that are going to be associated with this bill.”

Some of that is based on the league’s history as a health insurer for municipal employees. It costs $430 a year for each of the roughly 8,000 people the league insures just in payments for cancer coverage. That’s a total of about $3.4 million paid out in health benefits for municipal workers suffering from cancer.

“The science is less than exact on this. There is some correlation, and there is some evidence of elevated risk of getting some kinds of cancer,” Jeffrey said. “But the cancers that they’ve got in the bill, there’s about a 20 percent increase from being a firefighter. … What that means is, of every six cases of cancer, maybe one of them will have been associated with being a firefighter. But we’re going to pay for all six.”

Supporters of the legislation said such fears were overblown. Vinci, a captain in the South Burlington Fire Department, said 12 cases of cancer were reported among Vermont firefighters during the past 15 years.

Sen. Vincent Illuzzi, a legislative leader on the issue, said the bill would require periodic cancer screening for firefighters and would prohibit them from smoking if they want to be covered. The health benefits of those two provisions should outweigh any increases in workers’ compensation rates, he said.

Also, it will help attract and retain volunteers, who make up the bulk of firefighters in rural Vermont.

“If we have strong volunteers, if we have healthy professional firefighters, ultimately the cost is going to be reduced,” said Illuzzi, R-Essex-Orleans. “Property taxes would soar if every community … had to go out and hire part-time or full-time workers.”

Advocates said compensating firefighters or their families for their dangerous work should be a responsibility of society when they become sick.

Insurance companies generally receive the benefit of the doubt in contested proceedings now, said Jim Dunn, a lawyer who works with the firefighters’ group.

He cited the case of Albert George as one whose family would have benefited if the law had been in place before now.

George, a former assistant chief in the Burlington Fire Department, worked for the department for 40 years before dying in 2003, of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

His family filed for workers’ compensation death benefits but was denied because they couldn’t prove his cancer stemmed from firefighting. The state Labor Department’s ruling is on appeal in Chittenden Superior Court.

“Assuming he was a qualified firefighter, under this bill and (if) this diagnosis occurred today — unless an insurance carrier could show his cancer was caused by some unrelated event — he would have prevailed,” Dunn said.

source : www.burlingtonfreepress.com