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Mass. Ups Payment To Funeral Homes To Bury Unclaimed Bodies

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Massachusetts’ medical examiner's office has nearly doubled the amount of money offered to funeral homes to bury unclaimed bodies in an effort to clear a backlog of corpses that threaten to overwhelm storage capacity.The office last month started offering funeral homes $1,000 to handle the burials in addition to the $1,100, already offered by the Department of Transitional Assistance. Funeral homes said $1,100 was insufficient to cover costs.

At the lower payment, just three funeral homes handled the burials.

A spokesman for the Executive Office of Public Safety and Security, which oversees the medical examiner, tells The Boston Globe that since the higher payment took effect Jan. 13, funeral directors have accepted 17 unclaimed bodies for burial.

The office handles an average of 100 such cases each year.

Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.