The broken promises of the NFL concussion settlement (1 Viewer)

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Optimus Prime

Optimus Prime

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Good, sad and long article
=================

When Irv Cross applied for money from the NFL concussion settlement in 2018, his dementia was obvious to anyone who spent more than a few minutes with him.

At 78, the former NFL player and trailblazing sports broadcaster struggled to speak coherently, forgot to change his clothes and suffered from urinary incontinence, his wife told doctors. Cross had been diagnosed with dementia by another doctor months before he was evaluated by two NFL settlement doctors, his medical records show.

But the settlement doctors concluded they couldn’t diagnose Cross with anything, their reports state. While Cross’s symptoms met the standard definition for dementia in American medicine, they agreed, his test scores didn’t meet the NFL settlement’s definition.

“He does not appear to qualify for any diagnosable conditions through the NFL program,” a settlement neurologist wrote. Cross died three years later, of what his doctors thought was just Alzheimer’s disease. An autopsy found he also had suffered from severe chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a brain disease linked to football.

When Al Bemiller filed his settlement claim in 2019, his children hoped for a quick approval and money to help with his care. He had been diagnosed with dementia four years earlier and needed around-the-clock assistance preparing meals, showering and getting dressed.

But a doctor on the NFL settlement’s review panel responded to Bemiller’s records with skepticism. Perhaps depression was actually causing his dementia symptoms, the review doctor suggested. Claim denied. Bemiller died two years later of dementia.

And when Don Maynard applied in 2019, his doctor was so alarmed he said he would file the diagnostic paperwork right away, Maynard’s son recalled. But that paperwork went into a bureaucratic black hole for more than two years. The letter informing Maynard that settlement doctors diagnosed him with dementia arrived in January 2022 — three days after he died of dementia.

Finalized in 2015, the NFL concussion settlement resolved the most serious threat America’s most popular and lucrative sports league has faced. While the NFL admitted no wrongdoing, it promised to pay every former player who developed dementia or several brain diseases linked to concussions. Players suffering from CTE, the league pledged, also would get paid once they developed symptoms of dementia. The league even agreed to fund a nationwide network of doctors to evaluate players and provide those showing early signs of dementia with medical care.

In seven years since the settlement opened, the NFL has paid out nearly $1.2 billion to more than 1,600 former players and their families — far more than experts predicted during settlement negotiations. The league points to these figures as evidence of the settlement’s fairness.

But behind the scenes, the settlement routinely fails to deliver money and medical care to former players suffering from dementia and CTE, a Washington Post investigation found, saving the NFL hundreds of millions of dollars, if not more.

The Post reviewed more than 15,000 pages of documents relating to efforts by more than 100 former players to qualify for settlement benefits, including thousands of pages of confidential medical and legal records. The Post also interviewed more than 100 people involved with the settlement — including players, widows, lawyers and doctors — as well as 10 board-certified neurologists and neuropsychologists for their expertise on how dementia is typically diagnosed.

Among The Post’s findings:

  • The settlement’s definition for dementia requires more impairment than the standard definition used in the United States. Several doctors who have evaluated players told The Post that if they used the settlement’s definition in regular care, they would routinely fail to diagnose dementia in ailing patients. “I assumed this was written this way, on purpose, just to save the NFL money,” said Carmela Tartaglia, an associate professor of neurology at the University of Toronto.
  • At least 14 players have, like Cross, failed to qualify for settlement money or medical care and then died, only to have CTE confirmed via autopsy. Eight of these players were diagnosed in life with dementia or a related memory disorder but still failed to qualify for settlement benefits.
  • In more than 70 cases reviewed by The Post, players were diagnosed with dementia by board-certified doctors, only to see their claims denied by the administrative law firm that oversees the settlement. While the NFL has often blamed denied claims on fraud, none of the denials reviewed by The Post contained allegations of fraud. Instead, records show, settlement review doctors simply overruled physicians who actually evaluated players, often blaming dementia symptoms on other health problems also linked to concussions, including depression and sleep apnea.
  • The NFL’s network of settlement doctors has been beset by systemic administrative breakdowns since its inception. Former players suffering from dementia wait, on average, more than 15 months just to see doctors and get the records they need to file a claim. Maynard was one of two players The Post found who waited more than two years to get paperwork and died before they could get paid.
In total, court records show, the settlement has approved about 900 dementia claims since it opened in 2017. It has denied nearly 1,100, including almost 300 involving players who were diagnosed by the settlement’s own doctors...........

 
It’s difficult to say just how much embarrassment and exposure it will take to force those rotters in NFL ownership to accept responsibility for the hazards of the game they reap billions from, and stop treating players like disposable napkins at their profit banquet. Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce is beloved now, but if he develops concussion-related cognitive problems later and tries to seek medical recompense from the league, here is what he can expect: a slow walk to a swindle.

Anyone who doubts that should talk to the family of Don Maynard. As a younger man Maynard was like Kelce is now: an agile dancy-hipped record-setter, whose fingertips were Joe Namath’s favorite target and who helped the New York Jets win a sensational Super Bowl. Then he grew old and confused. In 2019 the NFL settlement’s own network doctors agreed he had dementia. Three years later his compensation claim was still stuck in a torturous medical-legal bureaucracy, whichseems intentionally built to deny and delay claims until players die.

Maynard finally got a letter saying he qualified for a settlement — three days after his death in an assisted-living facility in January ‘22.

Reading The Washington Post’s expose of the concussion settlement failure provokes a wildfire of anger, so widespread it’s hard to know what to be angriest about. Let’s start with The Post’s investigative conclusion that a breathtaking 1,100 player dementia claims have been denied, potentially worth about $700 million in compensation or more.

Ex-players have waited months for appointments and years for test results — only for anonymous review boards to overturn the diagnoses of the doctors who examined them. Almost 300 claims were denied even though the NFL settlement’s own doctor network diagnosed them. One review doctor told The Post he felt pushed to deny claims so as to suppress settlement costs, which have risen to $1.2 billion.

Or maybe what’s most incensing is the revelation that the settlement operates on a more onerous definition of dementia from the standard used by doctors in this country.

This is chicanery, pure and simple.

As any American family with someone suffering from encroaching dementia well knows — over 6 million families and climbing — one of the most painful mysteries of the disease is how a person can be perfectly functional in one area and yet be completely nonfunctional in another. Aphasia can make it difficult to speak, yet someone can still drive.

But under the terms of the NFL settlement — which some players now say were never explained to them — players must have at least four impaired tests across two different protocols to receive a qualifying diagnosis. Randolph Evans, a neurologist with a 30-year practice in Houston and background in traumatic brain injuries, saw 38 of his NFL patients rejected, even though their test scores showed cognitive decline. They were considered not severe enough, because they still had some competencies. Denied.

At the root of this evil is a complicated mix of factors: the ugly suspicion that players are taking advantage and are overpaid, and old-fashioned skepticism that the effects of concussions aren’t so bad. “I think there’s still a great deal of uncertainty about the causation issue,” NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said coolly in a recently unsealed 2022 deposition, in which he also intimated that the players sign up for this kind of harm. “We all know there’s risks with playing football and other sports,” he said. “There’s risks to walking down the street.”

Actually, no, commissioner, the NFL is not a risk like walking down the street. It’s an industry beset by a pervasive environmental hazard, a 100 percent injury rate and a special problem involving CTE from head injuries similar to those experienced by military personnel. And which can be dangerous not just for the players but for those around them.............




 
We talked about this 10 years ago

saintsreport.com

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

good article from the washington post. long read though ===============================================================After 24 knee operations, the National Football League's former Man of the Year leans heavily on a crutch. When Reggie Williams pulls up his pants leg, what's underneath looks...
saintsreport.com saintsreport.com
 
Optimus Prime said:
Good, sad and long article
=================

When Irv Cross applied for money from the NFL concussion settlement in 2018, his dementia was obvious to anyone who spent more than a few minutes with him.

At 78, the former NFL player and trailblazing sports broadcaster struggled to speak coherently, forgot to change his clothes and suffered from urinary incontinence, his wife told doctors. Cross had been diagnosed with dementia by another doctor months before he was evaluated by two NFL settlement doctors, his medical records show.

But the settlement doctors concluded they couldn’t diagnose Cross with anything, their reports state. While Cross’s symptoms met the standard definition for dementia in American medicine, they agreed, his test scores didn’t meet the NFL settlement’s definition.

“He does not appear to qualify for any diagnosable conditions through the NFL program,” a settlement neurologist wrote. Cross died three years later, of what his doctors thought was just Alzheimer’s disease. An autopsy found he also had suffered from severe chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a brain disease linked to football.

When Al Bemiller filed his settlement claim in 2019, his children hoped for a quick approval and money to help with his care. He had been diagnosed with dementia four years earlier and needed around-the-clock assistance preparing meals, showering and getting dressed.

But a doctor on the NFL settlement’s review panel responded to Bemiller’s records with skepticism. Perhaps depression was actually causing his dementia symptoms, the review doctor suggested. Claim denied. Bemiller died two years later of dementia.

And when Don Maynard applied in 2019, his doctor was so alarmed he said he would file the diagnostic paperwork right away, Maynard’s son recalled. But that paperwork went into a bureaucratic black hole for more than two years. The letter informing Maynard that settlement doctors diagnosed him with dementia arrived in January 2022 — three days after he died of dementia.

Finalized in 2015, the NFL concussion settlement resolved the most serious threat America’s most popular and lucrative sports league has faced. While the NFL admitted no wrongdoing, it promised to pay every former player who developed dementia or several brain diseases linked to concussions. Players suffering from CTE, the league pledged, also would get paid once they developed symptoms of dementia. The league even agreed to fund a nationwide network of doctors to evaluate players and provide those showing early signs of dementia with medical care.

In seven years since the settlement opened, the NFL has paid out nearly $1.2 billion to more than 1,600 former players and their families — far more than experts predicted during settlement negotiations. The league points to these figures as evidence of the settlement’s fairness.

But behind the scenes, the settlement routinely fails to deliver money and medical care to former players suffering from dementia and CTE, a Washington Post investigation found, saving the NFL hundreds of millions of dollars, if not more.

The Post reviewed more than 15,000 pages of documents relating to efforts by more than 100 former players to qualify for settlement benefits, including thousands of pages of confidential medical and legal records. The Post also interviewed more than 100 people involved with the settlement — including players, widows, lawyers and doctors — as well as 10 board-certified neurologists and neuropsychologists for their expertise on how dementia is typically diagnosed.

Among The Post’s findings:

  • The settlement’s definition for dementia requires more impairment than the standard definition used in the United States. Several doctors who have evaluated players told The Post that if they used the settlement’s definition in regular care, they would routinely fail to diagnose dementia in ailing patients. “I assumed this was written this way, on purpose, just to save the NFL money,” said Carmela Tartaglia, an associate professor of neurology at the University of Toronto.
  • At least 14 players have, like Cross, failed to qualify for settlement money or medical care and then died, only to have CTE confirmed via autopsy. Eight of these players were diagnosed in life with dementia or a related memory disorder but still failed to qualify for settlement benefits.
  • In more than 70 cases reviewed by The Post, players were diagnosed with dementia by board-certified doctors, only to see their claims denied by the administrative law firm that oversees the settlement. While the NFL has often blamed denied claims on fraud, none of the denials reviewed by The Post contained allegations of fraud. Instead, records show, settlement review doctors simply overruled physicians who actually evaluated players, often blaming dementia symptoms on other health problems also linked to concussions, including depression and sleep apnea.
  • The NFL’s network of settlement doctors has been beset by systemic administrative breakdowns since its inception. Former players suffering from dementia wait, on average, more than 15 months just to see doctors and get the records they need to file a claim. Maynard was one of two players The Post found who waited more than two years to get paperwork and died before they could get paid.
In total, court records show, the settlement has approved about 900 dementia claims since it opened in 2017. It has denied nearly 1,100, including almost 300 involving players who were diagnosed by the settlement’s own doctors...........

Click to expand...
The NFL is.a lying organization
 
It's disgusting. With all these alarming, if not surprising, statistics surely there must be something that can be done to push back and bring these poor former players and their families some real relief. It's criminal what the NFL is getting away with. Greedy leeches. It's beyond the pale without a doubt.
 
…….Some of this doctor’s and others’ diagnoses were overturned by the administrative law firm overseeing the settlement because patients’ symptoms weren’t serious enough under the CDR scale:

They could, the reviewers said, still drive or work. Glen Ray Hines Sr., a former offensive tackle, could maneuver a vehicle and walk on a treadmill — but he couldn’t manage his finances; and his wife had to explain TV programs and newspaper stories to him.

His own doctor had been treating him for dementia for years. Review doctors, however, said the driving and exercise ruled him out. He died in an assisted-living facility; an autopsy found he had severe CTE.

At least 12 more players have met the same fate, with the same postmortem diagnosis.
To add insult to traumatic brain injury, even when players’ symptoms do meet every definition of dementia, their struggle often still isn’t over.

The NFL touted during settlement negotiations that it was protecting players with multiple health problems by waiving arguments about “causation.”

Yet it turns out this only meant that players wouldn’t have to prove their football careers caused their dementia — it didn’t mean they wouldn’t have to prove their dementia, not something else, was causing their cognitive decline.

Settlement review doctors denied claims by blaming sleep apnea, depression, alcohol abuse, bipolar disorder and even vitamin B12 deficiencies for former players’ impairment.

It didn’t matter that sometimes those players’ own physicians had ruled out these other causes…….

 
The NFL is a borderline criminal organization. They cooked up the bogus "bounty" fiasco against the Saints, destroying what was looking like a potential dynasty in the making, in order to provide coverage and a scapegoat so they could reach a settlement on the concussion and CTE issues.

Now, it comes out that they have just been toying with these former players and have been denying legitimate claims.

The league continues to make money hand over fist and the criminal commissioner in charge just laughs it all off.

It's pretty sad.
 
When Chuck Arrobio’s memory began to falter, he seemed like an ideal candidate for one of the more innovative benefits of the NFL’s landmark concussion settlement.


A Minnesota Viking for just one season, 1966, Arrobio worked for decades after football as a dentist. But before he retired in 2016, he displayed alarming signs of cognitive decline.

On a few occasions, Arrobio’s assistants narrowly prevented him from filling the wrong tooth or numbing the wrong side of a patient’s mouth.


A neuropsychologist diagnosed Arrobio with dementia in 2017, his medical records show, and speculated the cause was chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, the brain disease linked to football.

The devastating news came with some consolation: The NFL’s concussion settlement, years in the making, had finally taken effect, promising care and payments into the millions for former players suffering from dementia and CTE.
At his settlement evaluation, his medical records show, Arrobio didn’t know what season it was or what city he was in.

But despite his obvious symptoms, he failed to qualify for money or league-funded treatment.

Perhaps, a settlement neuropsychologist suggested, Arrobio was just dealing with a mood disorder related to his retirement.

Six months later, Arrobio died of heart failure at 73. An autopsy found CTE that had caused atrophy — tissue death so extensive that portions of his brain had shrunk, a telltale sign of most diseases that cause dementia.

A routine brain MRI exam probably could have detected the atrophy, according to five experts in neuroscience.

But the settlement’s evaluation didn’t include MRIs in 2017, nor does it today.

When the NFL agreed to settle lawsuits filed by thousands of former players alleging football left them with brain disease, the top lawyer for players promised a “state of the art” evaluation, paid for by the league, that would quickly connect players with care at the critical early stages of dementia, when treatment can help ease a patient’s suffering.


“It’s the best of the best,” Christopher Seeger, one of the nation’s leading class action attorneys, said in June 2017 at a meeting with former players.


But the settlement’s dementia evaluation was operating behind best practices the day it opened in 2017, a Washington Post investigation found.

And the quality gap between the settlement’s evaluation and a state-of-the-art examination for dementia has only widened since, leaving thousands of former players with assessments that fall far short of the sophistication promised by their top lawyer……

Former New Orleans Saints and Philadelphia Eagles linebacker Vaughan Johnson failed to qualify in 2019, even though doctors outside the settlement had diagnosed him with dementia.

When he died that December, an autopsy found CTE with atrophy — brain damage that experts said could have been detected via MRI…….

 
Last edited:
Snakehead said:
The NFL does not care about player safety, they only care about money. If they do something about safety it is in response to an issue, but once that issue moves out of the news cycle, the NFL moves on.
Click to expand...
You mean like pretending you care about women with your once a year breast cancer awareness campaign... While at the same time ignoring a video of a guy knocking his gf out and then dragging her out of an elevator by her hair? Then lying about it once it went public?
 
Snakehead said:
The NFL does not care about player safety, they only care about money. If they do something about safety it is in response to an issue, but once that issue moves out of the news cycle, the NFL moves on.
Click to expand...
Not exactly true - they care about player safety as much as is minimally required to continue to grow business and profits. So they care about player safety, just not the individual humans that are those players.

Once the NFL reached billion dollar status, the machine was in motion and players became cogs in that profit machine. They are numbers and the focus of the league is to keep as many of those numbers (players) in play and generating the profit.

So the nfl cares about player safety, just not people safety.

People are replaceable and thus irrelevant to the goals of the machine.
 
HouseCall said:
Not exactly true - they care about player safety as much as is minimally required to continue to grow business and profits. So they care about player safety, just not the individual humans that are those players.

Once the NFL reached billion dollar status, the machine was in motion and players became cogs in that profit machine. They are numbers and the focus of the league is to keep as many of those numbers (players) in play and generating the profit.

So the nfl cares about player safety, just not people safety.

People are replaceable and thus irrelevant to the goals of the machine.
Click to expand...

Yes, this.
 

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