Adding cancer to ailments covered under the fund "is under consideration," U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said today after a Senate Finance Committee hearing in Washington on her department's fiscal 2012 budget.
Discussions over whether there is enough evidence to make patients eligible for treatment costs "probably will be resolved in the very near future," Sebelius said.
The compensation fund run by Birnbaum is one of two that pays money to first responders who have suffered losses as a result of Sept. 11. The fund also covers the crash sites at the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, and near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
The New York City Police Department lost 23 officers in the World Trade Center collapse. In the years since, about 50 have died from complications, six of whom the Sergeants Benevolent Association lists as dying from cancer, according to a comment submitted to the CDC docket for the hearing.