WORTH - a film about the 9–11 Twin Towers Fund and the transformative power of suffering
- Dr. Lloyd
- Aug 14
- 4 min read
We all experience loss – of a family member or dear friend, of a job, a home, precious personal property, and let’s not forget a pet. In all instances, we suffer, for a matter of weeks to months or persistently, often called chronic.
Our capital driven societies, especially in the global east, measure the pain suffering produces in body and mind. Sometimes, circumstances call for measuring a person’s “worth”, calculated by their assets, or business earnings.
Imagine, being tasked with determining the worth of people, each individually, in the wake of the murders of the 9/11 twin towers, Pentagon, and Pennsylvania plane bombings. That shroud became the task of the 9/11 Victims Compensation Fund, whose Special Master - with broad authority and working pro bono - was a notable NY attorney named Kenneth Fineberg.
The Netflix film, “WORTH”, starring Michael Keaton, keenly portrays how the VCF was constituted and went about its work of measuring the “worth” of those victimized in the first major terrorist attack upon US soil. Individual and family “no fault, tax free payments” (freeing the plaintiff of needing to sue for damages, were calculated by rules developed by the Fund for those families identified and who applied as victims – and who chose VCF payment in lieu of their pursuing compensation in the courts.
The VCF has served 65,600 claimants, including those who were injured and the families of those who died as a result of the attacks and their aftermath. This included responders and survivors, such as local residents, area workers, and students.
In the week of the 911 terrorist attacks, The US federal government VCF began compensating the victims of the attacks. The Fund has to date dispensed in excess of $12 billion to victims, calculated by their assessment of financial losses that were a consequence of the 911 bombings. The Fund is overseen by the US Department of Justice and led by a “Special Master” charged with providing a humane, equitable, and proportionately valuable amount of money for the direct losses and suffering of each victim or family.
Kenneth Feinberg, an esteemed NY attorney, worked pro bono to lead the fund, which developed calculations meant to compensate victims for the losses they experienced as 9/11 victims.
The calculations were ‘best’ estimations developed anf by used by the Fund to go about its mission. It was not long before Feinberg came to see what his staff were telling him. Namely, the profound, personal, familial, emotional, and physical realities felt by victims each and every day often did not effectively cover the degree of damages (higher or lower) sustained by the victims.
Feinberg was a “by the book guy”. He, with his staff, had written the ‘book’, which contained the dollar amounts for the specific awards offered to the 911 victims, which would be offered them, in lieu of their going to court against those culpable for the pain, suffering, and losses of the victims.
To appreciate the “worth” assigned to an individual family and loved ones, is a road that only can be traveled with pain. But books of calculations have no heart or soul, as Mr. Feinberg soon found out.
Mr. Feinberg’s turning ‘to the light’ came by his sitting down himself (not only his staff) with victims and families and allowing their suffering to reach his heart and soul as well. His direct participation enabled the fund the greater flexibility needed to better match loss with compensation, thereby better equitably meeting the needs of the 9/11 victims.
The Fund was a remarkable innovation from which two messages stand out:
The first is how the heartbreaking American pastoral of the 911 bombings went from potentially heartless, “by the book” awards (of billions of dollars) to more humane, and thus more equitable, awards assigned by the Fund’s Special Master. It was his personally meeting with victims that transformed his thinking (and feeling) to revise some awards to better allow for more flexible humane and equitable disbursements.
The second is how the underused role of a “special master”, the conscience of any organization (duly appointed by the federal government), can become the key to what has it been a ‘locked box’ to achieving better corporate equity and humanity in complex human affairs.
I have a previously written about the billions of dollars by which the federal government is being defrauded, every year, by the untamed and runaway greed of for-profit owned or operated commercial Medicare corporations, who now insure over 50% of US Medicare recipients. Companies that now blow off Dept. of Justice penalties as high as $20 million – a mere fraction of the revenues they obtain from fraudulent billing of Medicare, including service denials to their subscribers of medically necessary care.
We need to ask why “Special Masters” have not been appointed to Hospital Corporation of America (HCA) and United Healthcare (and others) DOJ cases to serve as guardians of proper federal spending and control heartless
medical service denials of medically necessary care.
It’s been said, “never let a crisis go to waste.”
The film “Worthy” signals us to the growing destruction of American medicine by for-profit insurance and equity companies. Which can be stopped, but not by more faux negotiation. It’s too late for that. It’s by exercising proper authority when these corporations defy clear regulations and rules, thereby defying Federal regulations – and ‘stealing’ Medicare (our) money from its proper and needed use.
Lloyd Sederer MD is a psychiatrist, public health doctor, and nonfiction writer. His website, www.doctorlloyd.com, offers more of his reviews, opinions, and essays.