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WASHINGTON — For victims of the Boston Marathon bombings, the terrible physical cost may come with a daunting financial cost as well.

Many of the wounded could face staggering bills not just for the trauma care they received in the days after the bombings, but for prosthetic limbs, lengthy rehabilitation and the equipment they will need to negotiate daily life with crippling injuries. Even those with health insurance may find that their plan places limits on specific services, like physical therapy or psychological counseling.

Kenneth R. Feinberg, the lawyer who has overseen compensation funds for victims of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the shootings at Virginia Tech and other disasters, arrived in Boston on Monday to start the difficult work of deciding who will be eligible for payouts from a new compensation fund and how much each person wounded in the bombings and family of the dead deserves.

The One Fund Boston, which Mayor Thomas M. Menino of Boston and Gov. Deval Patrick of Massachusetts created a day after the bombings, has already raised more than $10 million for victims and their families. At the same time, friends and relatives have set up dozens of smaller funds for individual victims.

For at least 13 victims who lost limbs, including William White of Bolton, Mass., expenses may also include renovations to their homes that make it easier for them to get around.

“What if his stairs are at the wrong incline, or he needs a ramp, or the cobblestones in his backyard are uneven?” said Benjamin Coutu, a friend of the White family who helped create a donation page on a fund-raising Web site for Mr. White and his wife and son, who were also wounded in the blasts. “People who are insured in these situations think, ‘Wow, I’m O.K., I’m covered.’ It’s not until a month or two later that they realize, ‘I’m covered for the bare bones.’ ”

The overall medical costs are difficult to estimate, especially since it is not yet clear how much rehabilitation or future surgery the victims with the worst injuries will need. But as a basis for comparison, medical costs for shooting victims average about $50,000, said Ted Miller, a senior research scientist at the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation who studies the costs of injuries.

For Mr. Feinberg, whom city and state officials asked to administer the One Fund Boston, the first task is to determine how much money is going to be available through it. Most donations typically arrive in the first month after a disaster, he said, adding that the fund-raising window should ideally be brief. “I’m a big believer, in most of these programs, that the fund should be a very small duration,” Mr. Feinberg said in a phone interview. “Because you’ve got to begin to get the money out the door to the people who really need it, and you’ve got to know how much you’re going to distribute.”

The thornier job, though, will be figuring out who qualifies for the funds and how much each victim who survived — as well as the families of the three who died — should receive. More than 170 people were wounded in the blasts, and more than 50 remain in the hospital.

Mr. Feinberg said that he would seek input from victims and their families before deciding on a formula. For victims of the Virginia Tech shooting, he said, compensation amounts were based on how long they were in the hospital. After the movie theater shooting in Aurora, Colo., victims who were paralyzed or suffered traumatic brain injuries received just as much as the families of those who died.

“You can’t pay everyone the same if someone has a broken ankle versus a brain injury,” he said. “There’s got to be some sliding scale.”

After the shootings in Aurora, some of the hospitals who treated victims agreed to limit what they charged and to waive charges entirely. Tim Gens, executive vice president of the Massachusetts Hospital Association, said that the hospitals treating the Boston victims had not yet discussed how to handle billing, but that it would be decided case by case.

For the uninsured, Mr. Gens said, Massachusetts has a charity care fund that covers all or part of their costs, depending on their income. Each hospital also has its own policies for waiving costs in certain situations, he said.

Meanwhile, Mr. Gens said, “For those who have insurance, there really shouldn’t be an issue.” Massachusetts requires most of its residents to have health insurance, although a small number refuse to comply or get waivers. It is not yet clear how many of the wounded were visiting from other states, or how many were uninsured.

“Massachusetts has been the leader of ‘let’s create health insurance for everyone,’ ” said Dr. Miller of the Pacific Institute.“So it will be very interesting to see how that plays out in terms of how the costs get borne.”

Charlie Baker, a former chief executive of Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, one of the state’s largest insurers, predicted that given the circumstances, most insurance companies and employers would cover as much care as victims needed, regardless of what their policy allowed.

“If, say, they have a physical therapy benefit with an annual limit of 30 visits, I just don’t see a lot of employers saying, ‘Stick to the benefit,’ ” Mr. Baker said. “They’re going to say ‘go for it’ as long as the treatment is medically helpful.”

Rich Audsley, special adviser to a committee that helped distribute $5.4 million raised for victims in Aurora, said he wished there had been enough money to cover the needs of people who were not physically injured but suffered emotional trauma from witnessing the shootings or having victims die in their arms. Mr. Audsley said that he hoped some of the One Fund Boston money would go to community agencies that can provide counseling.

“We’re talking about emotional scars for many people that will be with them for the rest of their lives,” Mr. Audsley said.

Mr. Coutu, the family friend of some victims, said that while Mr. Feinberg figures out a formula for distributing money from the larger compensation fund, smaller fund-raising efforts could provide crucial interim help. The one for the White family has raised more than $55,000 so far.

“The great thing about these sorts of micro-fundraisers is they can access the funds immediately,” Mr. Coutu said. “This is theirs.”

After the 9/11 attacks, Mr. Feinberg compensated victims’ families by calculating the likely lifetime earnings of the dead. He won praise for his handling of the fund, which was created by Congress and paid more than $7 billion in taxpayer funds to more than 5,000 survivors and families of the dead. But it was an emotionally charged process.

“When people come to see me,” he said of disaster victims and their families, “I’d be better off with a divinity degree or a degree in psychiatry.”

For Wounded, Daunting Cost; for Aid Fund, Tough Decisions,
NYT,
22.4.2013,
https://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/23/
us/for-boston-victims-price-of-recovery-may-be-another-burden.html

Victims, Ages 8 and 29,

Remembered for Kindness

and Laughter

April 16, 2013

The New York Times

By BINYAMIN APPELBAUM

and JOHN ELIGON

BOSTON — Martin Richard and Krystle Campbell, two of three people killed Monday at the Boston Marathon, shared something in common with most of those injured by the blasts. They were there to watch others. They were not supposed to be the subjects of a newspaper story.

Ms. Campbell, 29, who went almost every year to watch the runners cross the finish line, was standing with a friend. Martin, 8, was standing with his family.

On the campus of Boston University, administrators said Tuesday afternoon that the third person killed was a graduate student. The Chinese Consulate in New York said that the victim was a Chinese citizen but that it was not disclosing her name at the request of her family. The university said she was watching the race close to the finish line with two friends, one of whom was in stable condition at Boston Medical Center.

On Tuesday, mourners dropped flowers on the front steps of the gray two-story Victorian home where Martin lived with his family in the Dorchester section of Boston.

Martin’s mother, Denise, and sister, Jane, 6, were badly injured by the blast. His older brother Henry, 12, and his father, Bill, also survived the explosions, said a spokesman for the family.

It was a shockingly sad turn for a family that was well-liked and active in the community — one that ate four-cheese pizza and meatballs several nights a week at a local Italian restaurant. They attended St. Ann Parish Neponset, a Roman Catholic church. Bill Richard was president of the board of St. Mark’s Area Main Street, a community revitalization organization.

The operator of a clock at the center of the neighborhood froze the hands at 2:50 on Tuesday, the time of the first blast.

“Bad things happen, I understand that,” said Suzanne Morrison, a close friend of the family. “But why three times over that family endured what they endured yesterday, that’s something I’ll never be able to process.”

Martin was kindhearted and had an “infectious smile,” Ms. Morrison said. She said he had spent a school year in the same class as one of her daughters.

“He was the one boy that all the girls had a crush on,” Ms. Morrison said. “He didn’t shun the girls. He would play with them. He was just a great, great kid.”

Mr. Richard released a statement, thanking “our family and friends, those we know and those we have never met, for their thoughts and prayers. I ask that you continue to pray for my family as we remember Martin.”

Martin was a third grader at Neighborhood House Charter School. He was frequently in front of his house playing sports with his brother and sister, whom a neighbor described as a tomboy. A red bicycle helmet sat on the front lawn on Tuesday and there was a basketball hoop and hockey goal in the driveway.

“Very active, very normal American kids,” said a neighbor, Jane Sherman, 64, describing the Richard children.

Martin would always tell her hi, Ms. Sherman said, but he was afraid of her Rottweiler, Audra Rose.

About 10:30 on Monday night, Ms. Sherman said, she saw Mr. Richard walking into his house, looking “white as a sheet.” She asked him what was wrong but he did not answer. She then went to his house and asked a family friend who was at the Richard home what had happened.

“He said, ‘Martin is dead.’ ”

Ms. Campbell’s family initially was told that she was merely injured, according to her grandmother Lillian Campbell. Her identity was confused with that of a friend who had been standing with her. Ms. Campbell’s parents learned their daughter had died only when they entered the other woman’s hospital room, Lillian Campbell said.

“We’re heartbroken at the death of our daughter,” her mother, Patty Campbell, who could barely be understood through her tears, said in a statement she read on the porch of the family’s Medford home on Tuesday afternoon. “She was a wonderful person. She was sweet and kind and friendly and she was always smiling.”

Ms. Campbell worked long days and nights as a restaurant manager, most recently for Jimmy’s Steer House in Arlington, but friends said she never lost her sense of humor.

“She made everyone feel special, and in her line of work, it’s really hard,” said Laurie Jackson Cormier, who ran a park where Ms. Campbell managed a restaurant for a number of years. “They work so damn hard, and you don’t often come across everyone who has that attitude.”

Ms. Campbell grew up in Medford, graduating from the local public high school in 2001. She started working as a waitress in high school, and worked her way up to a job as the manager of Hingham branch of the Summer Shack, a popular chain of Boston seafood restaurants.

At the end of the summer season at the Summer Shack in 2009, she organized a hot dog eating contest to rid the restaurant of hundreds of unsold sausages.

“I figured it’s the last weekend of the season, so why not have some people come out and stuff their face?” she told The Boston Globe.

Ms. Campbell lived with her grandmother for almost two years, caring for her after a medical procedure, before moving recently to Arlington and taking a new restaurant job on the other side of the surf and turf divide.

Lillian Campbell said her granddaughter called several times a week and came to see her most weeks. They had a cup of tea and “lots of laughs about foolish things.”

“Every time she comes in the house to see anybody it’s a hug and a kiss, and that’s how she left,” Lillian Campbell said.

“ ‘Love you, Nana,’ that’s what she said.”

Cate Seely, a friend of Ms. Campbell’s, ran the marathon on Monday. On Tuesday, wearing her marathon jacket, she walked up to the Campbell family home with the red rose she received after finishing the race and left it on the front steps.

Kitty Bennett and Michael Roston contributed research.

Victims, Ages 8 and 29, Remembered for Kindness and Laughter,
NYT,
16.4.2013,
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/17/us/
victims-ages-8-and-29-remembered-for-kindness-and-laughter.html

Survivors to Remember

Okla. City Bombing

April 19, 2007

Filed at 3:53 a.m. ET

The New York Times

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) -- Survivors and relatives of victims will gather to mark the 12th anniversary of Oklahoma City bombing on Thursday, three days after the deadliest shooting rampage in modern U.S. history shocked the nation.

Mourners gather each year April 19 at the former site of the Murrah Federal Building to observe the anniversary of the worst act of domestic terrorism in U.S. history, which killed 168 people and injured hundreds more.

Participants will observe 168 seconds of silence, followed by family members reading the names of their lost loved ones.

Organizers said attention also will focus on the deaths of 32 people at Virginia Tech on Monday during a rampage by a man who then killed himself.

''Violence obviously is happening,'' said Nancy Coggins, spokeswoman for the Oklahoma City National Memorial & Museum. ''We hope there are ways we can reach out to them and offer support. They will be in our minds and in our hearts.''

Coggins said the ''fairly low-key'' anniversary observance will be ''a little more prominent'' this year because former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who was mayor during the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, will address the crowd.

After the ceremony, Ron Norick, who was the mayor of Oklahoma City in 1995, and Giuliani, a Republican presidential candidate, will discuss how they led their cities through acts of terrorism during a symposium at the museum.

Six years before the Sept. 11 attacks, a cargo truck packed with two tons of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil was detonated in front of the nine-story federal building on April 19, 1995.

Timothy McVeigh was apprehended less than two hours later. He was convicted of federal murder charges and was executed June 11, 2001. Terry Nichols, who met McVeigh in the Army, was convicted of federal and state bombing charges and is serving life prison sentences.

Another Army buddy, Michael Fortier, pleaded guilty to not telling authorities in advance about the bomb plot and agreed to testify against McVeigh and Nichols. Fortier was released from a federal prison in January 2006 after serving most of a 12-year sentence.

Prosecutors said the bombing was a twisted attempt to avenge the deaths of about 80 people in the government siege at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, exactly two years earlier.

Survivors to Remember Okla. City Bombing,
NYT,
19.4.2007,
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/
AP-Okla-Bombing-Anniversary.html - broken link

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