Understanding and Improving Patient Access to The Never Forget the Heroes: James Zadroga, Ray Pfeifer, and Luis Alvarez Permanent Authorization of the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund Act

This chapter poses the question of how it matters that we have legalized vaccine injury in the ways that we have. Describing our institution in detail, the chapter focuses on the contemporary, ordinary business of the vaccine court, describing the kinds of professionals who work there and how they do their jobs. The most interesting cases are the middle-ground cases, in which there is some reputable story of how a vaccine might have caused the injury and no studies accepted as definitive that rule it out, and so the court has adapted a way of compensating these people but without full agreement that vaccines are truly the cause. The U.S. vaccine court design is part of a globally shared understanding that some kind of vaccine injury compensation is appropriate, but the chapter shows how the U.S. program stands out among the nineteen other systems across the industrialized world. The chapter also compares the vaccine court to other kinds of domestic alternative compensation schemes such as the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund.

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Did the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund Accurately Assess Economic Losses?

Topics in Economic Analysis & Policy ◽

10.2202/1538-0653.1438 ◽

2006 ◽

Vol 6 (1) ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Frank D Tinari ◽

Kevin E Cahill ◽

Elias Grivoyannis

Keyword(s):

Similar Process ◽

Economic Losses ◽

September 11Th ◽

Substantial Variation ◽

Monetary Compensation ◽

Victim Compensation ◽

The Future ◽

Special Master

Abstract Under the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund (VCF), victims' families were provided monetary compensation based on economic and non-economic losses in exchange for giving up their right to sue U.S. entities, such as airlines. Was the Fund successful in calculating economic losses, and should it be repeated in the wake of another such attack? This paper assesses the extent to which forensic economists influenced the Special Masters decisions. We find that, for the most part, the Special Master's economic awards before collateral offsets were bounded by the presumed award amounts and the forensic economist's calculations, with substantial variation across claimants. This result implies that the Special Master's economic awards appear to have been significantly influenced by other factors offered during the VCF hearings, raising questions about fairness if a similar process is to be repeated in the future.

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