Do no harm: Who should bear the costs of retired NFL players’ medical bills?

Pcola, Let me try to clarify a bit.

First off, the principal of insurance is to return you the place you were before the incident. Not a better place, not a worse place, but fair remuneration for the type of insurance.

Now, this is workers comp, so you're only eligible for medical coverage to repair the injury that was established to have occurred at work + lost wage benefits (66% of avg weekly wage) that cap at around $600.00 a week. Lost wage benefits also cap out at 10 years of lost wages.

So, the issue with your case and many others applicable to the NFL is "the Dr cleared him"

If you are cleared, or released to return to work with a diagnosis of max medical improvement for an injury, in other words there's no more treatment to be had, then basically your claim over.

There is no settlement because there is nothing to settle, your injury is repaired and you can return to work.

If in 15 years the same hip bothers you, well unfortunately there's no way to tell if its due to the said injury or simply time's effect on the body. The average 35 year old has a decent looking MRI of the spine, but the average 55 year old has 1-2 herniated discs. Time + gravity wrecks a body.

Anyway, if the worker has continuous visits + an uncertain treatment future, the the case may be settled to avoid prolonged cost to the ins company and business employing the worker. Instead of paying 3k a year in physical therapy cost, the parties could agree the injury will likely resolve in 4 years and settle for 10k.

Once settled, the worker loses his right to make another claim for that work related injury.

Workers have 1 year to file a claim from the day they are injured before their claim prescribes, typically. NFL players that choose to play through injuries and fail to report concussions lose their right to treat, which results in all this litigation. I hope that helped