Plan B Forum

Cancer-stricken Ground Zero worker Edgar Galvis has finally received a compensation check -- for zero dollars.

The 51-year-old Queens man, who suffered sinus problems and then throat cancer after months of removing toxic debris from the World Financial Center, was relieved to get a check in the mail for his court settlement with Merrill Lynch, whose offices he had cleaned.

But he was stunned when he saw the amount: $0.00.

His award had been $10,005, but his lawyers at the firm Worby, Groner, Edelman & Napoli Bern lopped off $2,579 for unitemized legal expenses.

Then they took a 33.3 percent fee of $2,124.

They also subtracted $352, a fee to the lawyer who referred him.

The remaining $4,950 was withheld for unspecified "liens," the letter says. Galvis thinks this was repayment of workers' compensation for aid.

"I have hit rock bottom," said Galvis, who is jobless and $30,000 in debt. "I was expecting a check, and you can imagine how I felt when I opened it. I couldn't believe it. I thought it was a joke."

The father of two, who lives in Glendale with his fiancée and her two kids, said he had to sell his car and relies on relatives for rent. "I get collection agencies whenever I open the mail. What little credit I had I don't have anymore," he said.

Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/quee ... z1TisqVzFS

New York (CNN) — Many 9/11 first responders are up in arms over a controversial decision that leaves cancer off the list of conditions covered by the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act.

Angry survivors of the September 11 terrorist attacks began to express their disappointment with the decision, which was announced Tuesday, at a series of town hall meetings being held by the Justice Department to explain how the compensation fund will work.

“I just think this is an injustice to people that have cancer,” said John Marshall, a retired New York Police Department detective who was diagnosed with throat cancer five years after he spent months working at ground zero.

He spoke at a town hall meeting Wednesday in Queens, New York.

“Every day, there are more and more first responders coming down with cancer,” Marshall said. “Stop looking through the microscope and just look at us as people.”

Cancer treatments won’t be covered by the compensation fund is because there is inadequate “published scientific and medical findings” that a causal link exists between September 11 exposures and the occurrence of cancer in responders and survivors, John Howard, the World Trade Center Health Program administrator, said in a statement.

The decision forms part of the first periodic review of what the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act will provide.

“It’s an emotional thing, and our hearts go out to people that have suffered cancer,” said Sheila Birnbaum, special master of the 9/11 Victims Compensation Fund. “But people have suffered from all kinds of cancers who were not exposed to 9/11. I think we have to wait to see what the medicine is going to tell us.”

After a lengthy battle, President Obama signed the $4.2 billion legislation in January to provide health care for those who helped clear the rubble and search for human remains at the World Trade Center site in New York.