Public Safety Officers' Benefits Program

This rule proposes to make the following changes to current regulations implementing the Public Safety Officers' Benefits (PSOB) Act: Adopting the World Trade Center (WTC) Health Program's List of WTC-Related Health Conditions (List), the WTC Health Program's standards for certifying that an injury is covered for treatment under the Program, and related regulatory provisions, establishing payment offset provisions between the PSOB Program and the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund, and revising the provisions that define when the statutory presumption of line-of-duty death resulting from certain heart attacks, strokes, and vascular ruptures is rebutted. The proposed changes based on the WTC Health Program's List and related provisions would provide a means for claimants to establish that certain public safety officers with chronic, often latent, health conditions sustained a line-of-duty injury under the PSOB Act. The proposed payment offset provisions are intended to implement statutory amendments to the PSOB Act requiring such offset and to facilitate claims processing. Similarly, the proposed rule implementing the statutory presumption associated with certain heart attacks, strokes, and vascular ruptures is intended to amend the current regulation to conform to recent amendments to the PSOB Act and to improve the processing of such claims.