platinumvinnyv
Pro-Bowler
- Joined
- Mar 19, 2009
- Messages
- 2,047
- Reaction score
- 3,971
- Age
- 36
Offline
Perfect answer
The broken promises of the NFL concussion settlement (1 Viewer)
- Thread starterOptimus Prime
- Start date
- Latest activity Latest activity:
sfidc3
Pro-Bowler
- Joined
- Mar 14, 2015
- Messages
- 11,148
- Reaction score
- 16,599
Offline
They've always been an evil empire but at least had some integrity in the game before this clown Goodell.....at some point the owners decided they wanted a company/yes man to be commissioner, it's been disasterous IMO for the integrity of the game but they are still raking in record profits.....
Keep in mind this is what you get when billionaires run something, they only care about the bottom line.....the only empire that may be worse is FIFA.....
Keep in mind this is what you get when billionaires run something, they only care about the bottom line.....the only empire that may be worse is FIFA.....
- Joined
- Sep 18, 2001
- Messages
- 2,139
- Reaction score
- 1,985
Offline
As a young attorney I worked on cases defending the tobacco industry from claims that their products caused cancer in smokers. Back then the playbook was always the same: Do a comprehensive investigation into all the potential pathologies in a plaintiffs' background and then argue that any one of them was as likely to have caused the cancer as tobacco smoking. Diet. Drinking. Drug use. Workplace exposure. Anything but the most likely cause. It's the same drill all over again. Sleep apnea is why the ex-player has dementia? Not the thousands of blows he suffered to the head. Not the multiple concussions. Not CTE, found in almost all players' brains with dementia post-mortem. Sickening. The judge and or the political system should land on the NFL with two-feet and force them to stop playing games. Enforce the standard medical definition of dementia in settlement claims. Streamline the review process deferring to the treating physicians diagnosis of their patients instead of second-guessing them. And threaten the league with draconian penalties if they fail to do right by these former players they claim to care about...
OP
OP
- Joined
- Jul 18, 1998
- Messages
- 25,084
- Reaction score
- 54,229
Offline
The NFL concussion settlement should be pried open, like the dented, expired can of goods that it is, and revised. Players are part of the “NFL family” when everyone is hugging at the draft and a guy has his career in front of him. But what happens at the end of the day when he’s no longer a functional commodity?
For a member of the league’s greatest generation that built the league, when his vagueness and slowing speech or delusions and tremors set in, he is treated as a financial liability to be systematically haggled over as a “claimant” by arbiters arguing his “concurrent conditions” and whether his depression and anxiety are “alternative causations” for the fact that he can’t tell you what month it is. Someday, that could be Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce.
No settlement is ever truly satisfying. A hideous legal fight ended with a complex agreement that, to give the lawyers due credit, has paid out nearly $1.3 billion, as opposed to the alternative, which was years more litigation. But the settlement also has terrible shortcomings, ones there is no excusing NFL team owners or the lawyers for. The 1,300 former players whose claims have been denied should demand a new legal review from Judge Anita Brody to force the NFL to adhere to contemporary medical standards, if not basic decency.
As anyone who has been through any kind of negotiation knows, here’s what happens in settlement talks: First the lawyers reach a “framework” agreement. But then they start typing up the exact language — and inserting all kinds of sophistry calculated to favor their side. That’s what seems to have happened here. As The Washington Post’s Will Hobson has documented in an investigative series, the settlement’s agreed-on method for how to evaluate players for cognitive impairment, brain damage or other neurological diseases was supposed to be “state of the art.”
But it turned out getting a claim paid required a finding of far more impairment for dementia than your neurologist or mine would use.
And the settlement’s “state of the art” dementia evaluation does not include MRI exams, considered by doctors a critical tool for detection and early treatment of neuro-related issues. Conveniently, this saves the NFL millions.
Under the provisions of this deal, it’s all too easy for dementia symptoms to be attributed instead to other health problems that commonly afflict former players, such as depression or sleep apnea. So instead of getting their claims paid, you know what some former players have received? Autopsies showing obvious evidence of brain disease.
The U.S. standard for diagnosing dementia is neurological assessment via tests of memory, language and executive function. Normally, one or two impaired results lead to a doctor’s diagnosis. But under the settlement, an ex-NFL player must show four impairments. To be defined as suffering from “early dementia,” he has to be judged as “unable to function independently” at social events and to “need prompting” in his hygiene. As anyone with a family member with Alzheimer’s knows, there is nothing “early” about those symptoms, or questionable............
For a member of the league’s greatest generation that built the league, when his vagueness and slowing speech or delusions and tremors set in, he is treated as a financial liability to be systematically haggled over as a “claimant” by arbiters arguing his “concurrent conditions” and whether his depression and anxiety are “alternative causations” for the fact that he can’t tell you what month it is. Someday, that could be Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce.
No settlement is ever truly satisfying. A hideous legal fight ended with a complex agreement that, to give the lawyers due credit, has paid out nearly $1.3 billion, as opposed to the alternative, which was years more litigation. But the settlement also has terrible shortcomings, ones there is no excusing NFL team owners or the lawyers for. The 1,300 former players whose claims have been denied should demand a new legal review from Judge Anita Brody to force the NFL to adhere to contemporary medical standards, if not basic decency.
As anyone who has been through any kind of negotiation knows, here’s what happens in settlement talks: First the lawyers reach a “framework” agreement. But then they start typing up the exact language — and inserting all kinds of sophistry calculated to favor their side. That’s what seems to have happened here. As The Washington Post’s Will Hobson has documented in an investigative series, the settlement’s agreed-on method for how to evaluate players for cognitive impairment, brain damage or other neurological diseases was supposed to be “state of the art.”
But it turned out getting a claim paid required a finding of far more impairment for dementia than your neurologist or mine would use.
And the settlement’s “state of the art” dementia evaluation does not include MRI exams, considered by doctors a critical tool for detection and early treatment of neuro-related issues. Conveniently, this saves the NFL millions.
Under the provisions of this deal, it’s all too easy for dementia symptoms to be attributed instead to other health problems that commonly afflict former players, such as depression or sleep apnea. So instead of getting their claims paid, you know what some former players have received? Autopsies showing obvious evidence of brain disease.
The U.S. standard for diagnosing dementia is neurological assessment via tests of memory, language and executive function. Normally, one or two impaired results lead to a doctor’s diagnosis. But under the settlement, an ex-NFL player must show four impairments. To be defined as suffering from “early dementia,” he has to be judged as “unable to function independently” at social events and to “need prompting” in his hygiene. As anyone with a family member with Alzheimer’s knows, there is nothing “early” about those symptoms, or questionable............
- Joined
- Mar 4, 2003
- Messages
- 10,135
- Reaction score
- 5,119
- Age
- 57
Offline
I am shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on here.
But I am even more disappointed that they cant even give one of their own HoFers (Maynard) the benefit of the doubt. Seems as though they learned nothing from Mike Webster.
Saintman2884
Hall-of-Famer
- Joined
- Dec 17, 2003
- Messages
- 18,193
- Reaction score
- 5,699
Offline
Players like Mike Webster, Junior Seau, Dave Duerson, Andre Waters well-publicized struggles with premature dementia and accelerated Alzheimer's disease in conjunction with memory loss, cognitive decline sort of forced a long-hidden, yet well known secret within the NFL ranks out into the open to the extent the NFL (and Roger Goodell) were forced to do damage control and find an unwilling, convenient scapegoat to blame all of the NFL's decades worth of sins, crimes onto one team because we are historically, an NFL franchise many in the sports MSM and wider public views as lovable losers, so who cares if we ruin their momentum and possible chance at being a Dynasty. No one outside New Orleans or the central Gulf Coast cares about the Saints, their expendable.
Once Goodell and NFL.executives were finished giving the appearance of doing something while actually not accomplishing or dealing with the root core problem, the initial controversy had passed on from the 24/7 news cycle and NFL could go back to widdling down and screwing over hundreds of former ex-NFL players from the 60's, 70's, 80's, 90's and early 2000's from receiving desperately needed compensation money by having NFL-approved neurologists invent, derive alternative explanations for why ex-players have dementia so as to make it seem credible that they don't have to pay them for brain damage and save hundreds of millions of dollars annually.
BTW, I agree and understand with the Don Maynard analogy in comparing how flamboyant, flashy, and glitzy he was in the mid-late 60's NYC to Travis Kelce except the fact that in Maynard's day, a NFL player making $60-70k was rare (Maynard's teammate, Joe Namath was the team's highest-paid player at over 100k/year). Kelce makes more money in 6-7 games in any regular season then players in Maynard's era throughout most of their careers. Free agency, salaries exploding and player movement. The veteran minimum salary is over $250-300,000, thats almost as much as Namath's record-breaking 1965 $400,000 contract with the Jets when he signed with them over the St. Louis Cardinals.
Many more NFL players today and over the past 2-3 decades are actually retiring with more money saved up then their predecessors did from the 60's-late 80's. 50-55 years ago, many NFL star players worked second jobs to support themselves, I'm not saying their aren't some NFL players who aren't careless, frivolous, and irresponsible fiscally with their money but typically, most star NFL players over the past 25-30 years are doing better financially across the board then HOF WR's like Fred Belitinikoff who after retiring from the Raiders in 1978, was living in a one-story condo making $200/month in San Diego and actually played one season with the Montreal Alouettes in the CFL in 1979 to make little extra money and had to get into being a long-term WR's coach for his old team just to support himself after retirement.
Kenny Stabler sort of intimidated in his first autobiography, Snake, that one reason he signed with the Saints in 1982 and played a few more years longer then he should've was because his Saints contract ($250,000/annually) was the most money he ever made with any other team including Oakland and Houston. Archie Manning was actually earning 3-4x more money with his salary and endorsements on a 8-8 Saints team in 1979 than Terry Bradshaw was with Pittsburgh and winning Super Bowls most of the 1970's. According to Manning, Bradshaw needled him about that financial discrepancy every single time the two ever met back then.
Last edited:
OP
OP
- Joined
- Jul 18, 1998
- Messages
- 25,084
- Reaction score
- 54,229
Offline
Guess this can go here
=================
A new study of nearly 2,000 former NFL players found that one in three of those surveyed believe they have the degenerative brain disease CTE, which has affected hundreds of professional football players.
CTE, or Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, is a brain disorder that’s been directly linked to repeated concussions and traumatic brain injuries. The disease can only be diagnosed after death, using an autopsy.
The research from Mass General Brigham — which was published Monday in the journal JAMA Neurology — is particularly disturbing as it also determined that players who believe they have the disease are more likely to be suicidal.
A quarter of those who participated in the survey reported having frequent suicidal thoughts, compared with just five percent of players who did not have those beliefs…….
www.independent.co.uk
=================
A new study of nearly 2,000 former NFL players found that one in three of those surveyed believe they have the degenerative brain disease CTE, which has affected hundreds of professional football players.
CTE, or Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, is a brain disorder that’s been directly linked to repeated concussions and traumatic brain injuries. The disease can only be diagnosed after death, using an autopsy.
The research from Mass General Brigham — which was published Monday in the journal JAMA Neurology — is particularly disturbing as it also determined that players who believe they have the disease are more likely to be suicidal.
A quarter of those who participated in the survey reported having frequent suicidal thoughts, compared with just five percent of players who did not have those beliefs…….
1 in 3 former NFL players think they have degenerative brain disease CTE
Former players who believe they have CTE are also more likely to be suicidal
www.independent.co.uk
OP
OP
- Joined
- Jul 18, 1998
- Messages
- 25,084
- Reaction score
- 54,229
Offline
ELLENWOOD, Ga. — It took five years, three doctor’s visits, two federal lawsuits and countless emails with his lawyers, but Reggie Brown finally got word in February: He officially had dementia.
Which meant, he believed, it was time for the NFL to pay up.
Brown, 64, had been fighting for years to get paid by the landmark NFL concussion settlement, which promised to compensate every former player with dementia or a brain disease linked to head trauma.
Under the rules of the settlement, Brown’s lawyers told him, his diagnosis entitled him to about $200,000.
All that stood between him and a check was BrownGreer, the independent administrative firm that examines all claims.
He had heard stories about the firm taking months, even years, to review claims, but he hoped his would move quickly.
After all, his diagnosis had come from a board-certified settlement doctor who had been vetted by BrownGreer and lawyers for the NFL.
Then, in July, Brown received an email from the firm. It had reviewed his tax returns and scoured his social media activity, and it wanted to know:
If Brown had dementia, how had he managed to work part-time, earning about $30,000 annually the past five years?
Why did he claim online he worked as a motivational speaker?
And what about the Facebook posts that showed him attending his daughter’s graduate school graduation, traveling with his wife and going to the gym?
“It feels like these people are really trying to jam me up,” Brown, a former running back for the Atlanta Falcons and Philadelphia Eagles, said in a recent interview in his home outside Atlanta.
When lawyers for the NFL and thousands of former players struck the historic settlement a decade ago, they entrusted the crucial role of managing it to BrownGreer, one of the most experienced firms in the country focused on settlement administration.
And BrownGreer’s founding partner, Orran Brown Sr., publicly assured former players that his firm would work to make the process as efficient and fair as possible. It was building a nationwide network of settlement-approved doctors whose diagnoses would quickly lead to payments, Brown said.
And while the firm would consult a panel of expert review doctors on some claims, he said, it would rarely — if ever — deny claims involving diagnoses made by those settlement doctors.
“We do not take orders from the NFL,” he said then. His firm, he added, wanted to “get this done correctly and get it done quickly.”
But seven years later, BrownGreer has denied hundreds of claims involving diagnoses made by settlement doctors, and the firm has spent months — and, in some cases, years — scouring players’ social media and scrutinizing medical records, sparking an outcry from former players and causing some doctors to quit the settlement’s languishing network, a Washington Post investigation found……….
Which meant, he believed, it was time for the NFL to pay up.
Brown, 64, had been fighting for years to get paid by the landmark NFL concussion settlement, which promised to compensate every former player with dementia or a brain disease linked to head trauma.
Under the rules of the settlement, Brown’s lawyers told him, his diagnosis entitled him to about $200,000.
All that stood between him and a check was BrownGreer, the independent administrative firm that examines all claims.
He had heard stories about the firm taking months, even years, to review claims, but he hoped his would move quickly.
After all, his diagnosis had come from a board-certified settlement doctor who had been vetted by BrownGreer and lawyers for the NFL.
Then, in July, Brown received an email from the firm. It had reviewed his tax returns and scoured his social media activity, and it wanted to know:
If Brown had dementia, how had he managed to work part-time, earning about $30,000 annually the past five years?
Why did he claim online he worked as a motivational speaker?
And what about the Facebook posts that showed him attending his daughter’s graduate school graduation, traveling with his wife and going to the gym?
“It feels like these people are really trying to jam me up,” Brown, a former running back for the Atlanta Falcons and Philadelphia Eagles, said in a recent interview in his home outside Atlanta.
When lawyers for the NFL and thousands of former players struck the historic settlement a decade ago, they entrusted the crucial role of managing it to BrownGreer, one of the most experienced firms in the country focused on settlement administration.
And BrownGreer’s founding partner, Orran Brown Sr., publicly assured former players that his firm would work to make the process as efficient and fair as possible. It was building a nationwide network of settlement-approved doctors whose diagnoses would quickly lead to payments, Brown said.
And while the firm would consult a panel of expert review doctors on some claims, he said, it would rarely — if ever — deny claims involving diagnoses made by those settlement doctors.
“We do not take orders from the NFL,” he said then. His firm, he added, wanted to “get this done correctly and get it done quickly.”
But seven years later, BrownGreer has denied hundreds of claims involving diagnoses made by settlement doctors, and the firm has spent months — and, in some cases, years — scouring players’ social media and scrutinizing medical records, sparking an outcry from former players and causing some doctors to quit the settlement’s languishing network, a Washington Post investigation found……….
rlemieux
Who Dat?
Offline
NFL is big business about big money. They only care about the players when it’s convenient and it’s profitable.
Create an account or login to comment
You must be a member in order to leave a comment
Create account
Create an account on our community. It's easy!
Log in
Already have an account? Log in here.