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MISCELLANEOUS NEWS ITEMS | |
STATE SENATE PASSES LAW TO HELP INJURED POLICE OFFICERS, FIREFIGHTERS
March 05, 2010
(OLYMPIA, WA) -- The Washington State Senate has unanimously passed a bill that provides medical insurance for law enforcement officers and firefighters catastrophically disabled in the line of duty.
HB 1679, also called "the Jason McKissack Act" for the police officer that brought the problem to light, now goes back to the House for approval of a Senate amendment on Medicare.
Officer Jason McKissack was critically injured last year while trying to break up a fight between two teenagers, who turned on him and brutally beat him causing a brain injury that has prevented him from resuming his career as a police officer.
It was then McKissack learned about one of the many loopholes – and pitfalls for families – in America’s for-profit, employer sponsored health insurance.
Read details in a January 17 story in the Sky Valley Chronicle HERE
If he could not resume his job, McKissack could not keep his medical benefits and neither could his wife and two kids.
McKissack now lives on a state disability check almost nearly 40 percent below his previous pay check as a copy and his family cannot afford the private health insurance plan that would cost $1,300 a month for 18 months, then would increase to more than $2,000 per month.
McKissack found out his family would have been better off if he had been killed on the job as that way his family could have retained his police health benefits.
At present state law does not allow the city to cover officers who cannot come to work because of their disability. HB 1679 plugs that loophole by paying for catastrophically injured officers and firefighters' medical bills with money that would come from pension plans the officers pay into. The rest would come from state and local taxes.
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