<\/p>\n
Firefighter Matthew O’Reilly, during\u00a0a recent news conference,\u00a0details the hurdles he had to overcome to get his workers’ compensation insurer to cover his cancer because of a missing comma in current law.<\/p>\n
Howard Fischer, Capitol Media Services<\/p>\n
“As firefighters, we know that the job comes with risks,” he said.<\/p>\n
“But if one of those risks gets you sick because of the job, we should not be abandoned; we should not have to prove over and over against the law of what the law means and what it’s intended to mean.<\/p>\n
O’Reilly eventually did get his coverage. But what’s in SB 1215 should make that unnecessary for others who find themselves in the same position.<\/p>\n
Burned by the issue of punctuation, Payne, a Peoria Republican, recrafted the law so the list of presumptively covered conditions is no longer in a single sentence. Now, each of the 23 conditions has its own numbered paragraph.<\/p>\n
“SB 1215 matters because it helps ensure the next firefighter does not have to go through what I went through,” O’Reilly said.<\/p>\n
“It means firefighters diagnosed with a covered job-related cancer can focus on treatment, recovery, and family instead of fighting insurance companies,” he said at a recent ceremonial signing of the bill by Gov. Katie Hobbs.<\/p>\n
“This is not just about punctuation,” said O’Reilly. “It’s about people.”<\/p>\n
Dan Freiberg, president of the 9,000-member Professional Fire Fighters of Arizona, said the legislation sends an important message.<\/p>\n
“Arizona will not allow insurance companies to exploit ambiguity in the law at the expense of sick firefighters,” he said.<\/p>\n
Firefighters also gained another change in law designed to protect their health and prevent them from becoming ill in the first place.<\/p>\n
HB 2641 which also was signed prohibits the use of PFAS \u2014 a category known as “forever chemicals” \u2014 in the foam used by firefighters to put out blazes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Firefighter Matthew O’Reilly, during\u00a0a recent news conference,\u00a0details the hurdles he had to overcome to get his workers’ compensation…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":933463,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5131],"tags":[376407,5229,5643,1587,235,376406,12768,363205,210,3228,46146,1589,16776,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":["post-933462","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-phoenix","tag-adenocarcinoma","tag-america","tag-arizona","tag-az","tag-cancer","tag-comma","tag-firefighter","tag-foam","tag-health","tag-law","tag-pfas","tag-phoenix","tag-risk","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116916333031181033","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/933462","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=933462"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/933462\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/933463"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=933462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=933462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=933462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}