Cancer or heart disease – which caused 61% of career firefighter line-of-duty deaths from 2002-2017? According to the Firefighter Cancer Support Network, it was cancer, not heart disease. The latter caused 18% of line of deaths during that time. Many would have expected the opposite.
Coverage for cancer is now law in New York. Effective January 1, all fire districts, departments or companies in New York State are required to provide cancer benefit coverage for their volunteer firefighters. The Volunteer Firefighter Cancer Benefit Program, codified at Municipal Law Sec. 205-cc, provides three important benefits to firefighters who are diagnosed with certain types of cancer: a lump sum benefit, income protection and a death benefit.
The benefit is not provided within the Volunteer Firefighter Benefit Law. The State legislature determined that providing coverage as a VFBL benefit would have increased VFBL costs by too much, so it pushed the cost of coverage instead onto the local level – the district, the department or the company.
To be eligible for coverage a New York volunteer firefighter must have served at least five years as an interior firefighter, passed five annual mask fit tests, and also passed a physical exam with no evidence of cancer when he or she became a volunteer [Sec. 205-CC(1)(a)].
To summarize a somewhat more complicated formula, an eligible volunteer firefighter is entitled to payment of (a) an enhanced cancer benefit of $25,000 or $6,250, depending on the severity of the cancer, (b) a monthly disability benefit of $1,500 per month for up to 36 months, (c) and a death benefit of $50,000 upon proof that death resulted from complications associated with cancer.
Fire districts, departments and companies have to have insurance by January 1, 2019 or have satisfactory proof of the ability to self-insure. With just a few days to mandatory compliance, and to mandatory coverage, districts, departments and/or companies need to get their insurance in order. Enough information to satisfy anyone interested in this is at the web site of the New York State Association of Fire Chiefs.
