Last update - 03:21 14/11/2007
Cutting costs - at 1950s radiation victims' expense
By Yuval Azoulay
According to Article 12 D of the Economic Arrangements Bill, ringworm patients will no longer be allowed to see the minutes of the expert committee that decides whether their illness was caused by state-ordered radiation treatments in the 1950s, which would entitle them to state compensation. Nor will they be allowed to see any documents examined by the committee. That will obviously make it harder to appeal the committee's decisions.
The bill does allow patients to sue the state for access to these documents, but that is both expensive and time-consuming.
According to a senior Finance Ministry official, the change is designed to save money. When the law entitling ringworm patients to compensation was enacted in 1995, it was expected to cost a total of NIS 150 million. Twelve years later, the cost is approaching NIS 1 billion. Some 33,000 compensation claims have been filed - far more than the treasury expected.
The official explained that some 10 lawyers have become experts in handling these claims, and in some cases, "they are telling the claimants what to say to members of the expert committee. We even have found identical claims and affidavits."
To determine whether claimants were in fact forced to undergo radiation treatments in the 1950s, the committee asks them a long list of questions, such as where they underwent the treatment and what the radiation device looked like. Keeping all documents related to the committee's decisions secret, the official argued, would make it harder for lawyers to study them and instruct future clients what to say to get their claims accepted.
Unsurprisingly, the proposed change has outraged the radiation victims. "According to both the Freedom of Information Act and the Patient's Rights Law, anyone who undergoes a medical examination is entitled to the findings," said attorney Eitan Peleg, who represents the Ringworm Patients Association.
Association Chair Malka Cohen-Gilboa approached the issue from a different angle. "The state isn't willing to fund wigs for people who went bald from the radiation," she said. "Even with [wigs], these people have difficult lives. They're afraid to sit near an open window on a bus lest their wig be blown off; they avoid sports and society out of shame. Giving these people wigs is a matter of morality."