The day before the 19^th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the New York Daily News broke the story that the Trump administration secretly siphoned off millions of dollars from an important FDNY 9/11 health program.

The 9/11 health program is intended to track and treat FDNY firefighters, emergency medical technicians, and paramedics for the slew of 9/11 cancer and other related illnesses that they have been subject to.

The fund’s payments are authorized and made by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, the organization that oversees the 9/11 health program. According to the report, the Trump administration’s Treasury Department began withholding money from the payments that were being made without any notification.

At first, said the program’s director, Dr. David Prezant, it was about a half a million dollars per year in 2016 and 2017. In 2018 and 2019, about $630,000 was siphoned away per year. And in 2020, by late August, the Treasury had already diverted $1.447 million away from the 9/11 health program.

“Here we have sick World Trade Center-exposed firefighters and EMS workers, at a time when the city is having difficult financial circumstances due to COVID-19, and we’re not getting the money we need to be able to treat these heroes,” said Prezant, who serves as the FDNY’s Chief Medical Officer. “And for years, they wouldn’t even tell us — we never ever received a letter telling us this.”

Prezant sought answers for years, but never received an explanation from NIOSH or the Department of Health and Human Services.

After the explosive Daily News report, on the 19^th anniversary of the attacks, the Trump Administration admitted to siphoning millions from the FDNY 9/11 health program and “promised to try to put an end to the heartless practice.”

How Has the Administration Responded?

After years of apparently ignoring attempts to get an explanation for the missing funds, the Treasury Department spokesperson Rebecca Miller called the redirection of funds “an unfortunate situation,” saying that by law, the department takes some money from outgoing payments if there is a debt tied to the specific tax ID the payment is being made to. If this is true, some of the issue could be explained by the fact that many departments in New York City fall under the same ID number, and the FDNY 9/11 health program may have fallen victim to that.

“We have done everything in our power to try and resolve this issue and are continuing to work with the city while also look into possible alternate ways of making this happen,” said an administration official.

The Treasury Department admitted to siphoning funds, but has only admitted to taking about $1.9 million between August 2016 and May 2020, purportedly to cover “delinquent Medicare Secondary Payer debt” owed by “various entities within New York City,” though it is not clear which entities those are.

Documents that Prezant provided to the Daily News showed that the real figure was more like $3.7 million.

The report—and the subsequent admission from the administration—has sparked an outcry among lawmakers, advocates, and experts across social media.

Though the Treasury Department has admitted to redirecting funds, it has not yet come up with an explanation for why it did so quietly and with no explanation to those seeking answers over the last several years, including Prezant.

“It does feel Kafkaesque in a way that’s really unacceptable,” Miller said, “but you know I’ve been scouring our records too and trying to find anything, to see if there’s anything specific to Dr. Prezant’s engagement. It could just be that government and the administration is too complicated and the right people weren’t looking at this sooner.”

“You know what feels Kafkaesque?” Prezant said, after hearing Miller’s response. “A patient in a bed, who needs treatment, and can’t get it.”

“What seems Kafkaesque to me,” Prezant continued, “is that the federal government, after putting all this in place, then takes the money away from the very patients that ran into the towers to try to save people. Let them take the money from some other place.”