http://www.madison.com/wsj/home/local/314438Like thousands of other Americans, Judy Wolff, a nurse's aide at Holmen High School near La Crosse, dropped everything and rushed to New York City after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to see how she could help.
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 as they coped with the stunning loss of life, injuries and joblessness caused by the attacks.
After three weeks of breathing in a toxic cloud of crushed concrete, asbestos, lead and fumes from burned jet fuel, Wolff herself now is 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.