From DWT's 'So What Else Is New?' Dept.: What's the point of having disasters if Republicronies can't make a buck (or a million, or 11 mil) off them?

Former HHS Sec'y Tommy Thompson -- our next president?

"It is ironic that former HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson's firm won the contract to provide the services, given the history of delay from the Bush administration when he was secretary and now. But I am glad these heroes are finally getting the help they deserve."

--Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY)

Unless, of course, Secretary Thompson's company provides the kind of performance that HHS did while Secretary Thompson was running it. (And of course who can forget the galvanic campaign that came so close to winning the former secretary this year's GOP presidential nomination?)

The Associated Press's Devlin Barrett reports:

Ex-Bush health chief's firm wins Sept. 11 work

WASHINGTON (AP) -- As President Bush's health chief, Tommy Thompson was criticized for not doing enough to help workers exposed to toxic debris from the Sept. 11 attacks at the World Trade Center.

Now, a company he leads has won a $11 million contract to treat some of those workers who responded to New York's ground zero.

The contract awarded by the Centers for Disease Control is aimed at tracking the health of between 4,000 and 6,000 workers who live outside the New York City area, where a separate health monitoring program is in place. The CDC is part of the Health and Human Services Department, which Thompson headed in Bush's first term.

Internal e-mails obtained by The Associated Press show that the one-year contract went to Logistics Health, Inc., a La Crosse, Wis.-based company where Thompson is president.

While health secretary, Thompson was pressed by New York lawmakers to take a more active and aggressive role in tracking and treating Sept. 11-related health problems.

Of course there was nothing amiss in the contract-awarding process:

The CDC contract was awarded after the government received proposals from four different companies, including Thompson's, officials said. The contract went to Logistics Health based on "an evaluation of everything from cost to technical abilities to past performance," CDC spokeswoman Bernadette Burden said.

Because, as we all know, where the Bush regime is concerned, nothing matters but performance. (Now, now, laughing that hard is apt to lead to physical injury.)

As for the nitty-gritty:

Logistics Health will provide annual examinations to World Trade Center responders around the country, diagnose and treat Sept. 11-related conditions and provide a pharmacy benefit to those responders.

Late last year, the government halted an effort to organize health monitoring for ground zero workers spread around the U.S., saying the program could cost far more money than Congress has provided.

Estimates for how much treatment ground zero workers need -- and how much that treatment will cost -- vary widely. New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg have put the figure around $400 million a year, but that amount includes treating the much larger group of patients who live in and around New York City.

According to New York City officials, some 400,000 people were exposed to ground zero dust, and 71,000 have enrolled in a long-term health monitoring program for people with and without health problems. Health advocates believe the number of people sick years after their exposure is in the thousands.

Now, Representative Maloney has been outspoken in the fight for proper care for 9/11 victims, starting with those first responders, and if she's satisfied that this contract will accomplish its stated goals . . . well, maybe she's right.


BREAKING NEWS: LESS THAN 7 YEARS AFTER 9/11, NYC HIGH-RISE WORKERS HAVE AN 'ACTION PLAN' FOR NON-FIRE EMERGENCIES

While I was cobbling the above item together, everyone on my floor of our Midtown Manhattan high-rise office building was summoned to a fire drill. By law we have these on a regular basis, at some stated interval -- I always forget what. It's always an event of some jocularity, but we also take these things seriously, since we get regular reminders on the evening news of how vulnerable we are, packed into these giant death traps, in emergency situations.

But this fire drill was different. The gentleman who conducted the drill, who introduced himself as a now-retired 21-year veteran of the Fire Department (which certainly got my attention; like many New Yorkers I have mixed feelings about the NYPD but an admittedly sentimental near-reverence for the FDNY) explained that for the first time the fire drill wasn't about fire-related emergencies. As a result of the 9/11 Commission's discoveries about emergency preparedness, or lack of same, laws were passed which mandated the development of an Emergency Action Plan for non-fire-related events.

I'm not sure I grasped the limited amount of detail that was thrown our way, but I'm certainly glad to know that we now have a plan for dealing with all those other emergencies that may arise. And to think, it took less than seven years to accomplish it!

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