Law Gives 911 First Responders Free Healthcare For Life

Lifetime health care for the thousands of workers who fell ill after responding to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks passed through Congress after a long and arduous fight.

More than 14 years after the deadly attacks, Congress passed the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Reauthorization Act as an attachment to a bill that allots massive amounts of money to government funding and tax breaks, the Huffington Post reports.

“Passage of the Zadroga bill was a long, hard fight for the brave cops, firefighters and construction workers who put their lives and health on the line at ground zero,” said Republican Rep. Pete King of New York, who worked hard to get his party on board to support the bill, according to the Huffington Post.

The $8.1 billion health bill will spend $3.1 billion on health and extend the World Trade Center Health Program until the year 2090, and it will put $4.6 billion in the Victims Compensation Fund, to extend the program for five years.

In the fight to extend the program, which expired at the end of September, ailing first responders made many lobbying trips to Washington, while comedian Jon Stewart rallied behind them.

“It’s soon going to be out of money,” Stewart said earlier this month in a return to “The Daily Show,” according to the New York Times. “These first responders, many sick with cancers and pulmonary disease, have had to travel at their own expense to Washington, D.C., hundreds of times to plead for our government to do the right thing.”

Now, the heroes who saved lives and cleaned up rubble in the aftermath of Sept. 11 will not have to worry about whether or not they will be cared for.

“This victory belongs to [the responders],” the bill’s lead sponsor in the Senate, Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York said, according to the Huffington Post. “While this should have been an easy moral question for Congress with an obvious answer, our first responders were more than ready to stand up and fight for what they deserve, and today they won.”