Dave Pear's Blog

Some people just can’t seem to keep their hands out of the cookie jar. Or maybe it’s more like getting their fingers stuck in the till. Our friends over at AON Consulting have popped back up on the radar screen once again. A couple of weeks ago, Dave received another important communiqué from his good friends at the NFL Player Care Foundation. It was a reminder about this program for discount prescription drug benefit.

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For those of you who are just joining us, you can read more about AON Corp. by clicking HERE (this will bring up a list of past posts on AON). AON has been involved with the NFL and the Bert Bell/Pete Rozelle NFL Players Retirement Plan for years. They’ve provided the actuarial statistics on all of the players to the owners and the Plan.

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Since starting this blog, a lot of other retired players have told us the same story, with some of them actually hearing this advice from Gene Upshaw. Many of you have written us about how you were “advised” to take reduced early benefits because you were only expected to live to 55. Why wouldn’t you believe them? They had actuarial data (from AON) to show that retired players had dramatically shortened life spans from playing football. Of course, once you took the lower pension, you were stuck with it. That was one of the reasons so many of the old-timers are still only receiving a few hundred dollars a month in retirement “benefits” today – hardly enough to even cover real health insurance (if they can get any). With friends like that INSIDE the Union, who needed enemies?

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Here’s why we’re so excited about Dr. Amen’s offer to provide free brain scans which will be included in his upcoming study of football concussions. Many of you guys have already signed up but if you haven’t done so already, click HERE to read that earlier post and sign up right away – this offer is currently limited to the first 100 players to join the study!

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Over the years, the NFL has continued to do lip service about all those studies they’re supposed to have been conducting on brain concussions and injuries that most players sustain over their careers. But just like the calls for an open audit of their books, few people seem to have been privy to all of the the studies that they’re supposed to have collected. In the past, we’ve also pointed out that among other “studies”, the NFL apparently also has actuarial numbers on all of the players that were provided by a subsidiary of AON Corp. headquartered in Chicago. Some of the principals in AON Corp. also happened to be owners of the Chicago Bears – read some of those earlier posts by clicking HERE. You’ll be directed to a series of earlier posts on AON’s relationship to the NFL – including this one at the top – just keep scrolling down to the other posts below. Among other things, those actuarial numbers have been used to calculate just how much they hold back from you for your surviving spouse policy on your retirement benefits (And who has actually seen their paperwork for THAT policy? Isn’t all of that called a Conflict of Interest in any other business?).

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Here’s your personal invitation from Dr. Kristen Willeumier from the Amen Clinics to arrange an appointment to receive your free brain scan for their new study specifically focused on NFL football players’ concussions. NOTE: This study is completely independent of the NFL and the NFLPA.

For the past 20 years, Dr. Daniel Amen has led a dedicated team of medical professionals to help people overcome depression, anxiety, ADHD, memory problems, brain injuries, weight problems, and more. The Amen Clinics uses sophisticated brain imaging tools for a more thorough and accurate diagnosis. We use all the tools available to us to help optimize the brain, including natural supplements and medications to help people live happy and productive lives.

The Amen Clinics in Newport Beach is currently conducting a study investigating the effects of mild traumatic brain injury in professional football players. Using sophisticated imaging techniques our goal is to visualize the brains of NFL players to characterize the damage incurred by playing professional football. We will also utilize neurocognitive exams to identify any underlying deficits in memory. Following the initial tests, the player will meet with Dr. Amen personally to discuss the results and he will recommend a specific protocol of nutritional supplements for that player to help optimize his brain health. We invite the player to return to the Amen Clinics following 2 months on the protocol to see what progress has been made. This entire process is at no cost to the player. We appreciate their participation in this groundbreaking study and the Amen Clinics is dedicated to providing those players who have dedicated their lives to football with an opportunity to bring their brains to a healthier state!

If you are interested in participating in this study or if you have any additional questions, please feel free to contact Dr. Kristen Willeumier (949-266-3703) at the Amen Clinics (click HERE to visit their website).

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Most of our readers know by now that Dave’s been in this fight for over 25 years with his Union, the NFLPA, to get justice for himself and his retired brothers. There’s just so much material to go through that the sheer volume can sometimes get overwhelming. The worst part is that it seems almost everything you look at is just another bad chapter in a never-ending novel on the abuse that’s been heaped on the majority of retired players for decades. (We wrote about this in earlier posts – click HERE and HERE and HERE.) After a while, it’s easy to get numb and to start overlooking stuff that’s been right under your nose all along.

In researching material for an upcoming post, Dave dug up this old letter from ADP Benefit Services dated 1997 that outlines an insurance program supposedly offered to all retired players under the Bert Bell/Pete Rozelle NFL Player Retirement Plan. Since receiving this form letter, Dave hasn’t received any additional information or policies detailing his insurance plan benefits. What’s even worse, because he’s been officially designated as a retired disabled football player, he’s been automatically disqualified and completely ineligible for any kind of life insurance now. It seems these guys were offered an “insurance benefit” that they never got to see, while also guaranteeing it would leave them completely uninsurable with any other insurance company. (Click on the letter to enlarge for reading.)
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Washington State Governor Chris Gregoire just signed the nation’s most comprehensive return-to-play concussion law for high school sports. The law was named for Zackery Lystedt, a 16-year old high school football player who went back to play following a concussion and subsequently suffered a life-threatening brain injury. All athletes under the age of 18 will now need a licensed health care provider’s approval before being allowed to return to the game after a concussion. The law will also require each of the state’s school districts to work with the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association to develop standards for educating parents, players and coaches of the dangers of concussions and head injuries. (Zackery finally is only partially recovered after over a year of rehab.*)

Hopefully, this will be the beginning of a broader acknowledgment of the long-term effects of concussions and brain injuries from sports in general and football in particular. The NFL has spent much time and money burying their study results for their own ends, including their actuarial numbers which a subsidiary of insurance giant AON has reputedly been conducting for years. Of course, Directors and Officers of AON have also been owners of the Chicago Bears for decades… (Read our earlier posts HERE and HERE or you can simply do a search for Aon on our blog by typing it into the search bar at the top of this website.)

Concussions and brain injuries will be among the many topics discussed at The Summit in Las Vegas May 29 – 31.

In the meantime, you can also read an enlightening interview with sports agent, Leigh Steinberg, HERE, in which he discusses his personal thoughts about concussions.

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Dave sure gets some interesting phone calls. Remember the gunshot call just before Gene Upshaw left the scene? (Read that post by clicking HERE.) We’re happy to say those kinds of calls have stopped.

But with the letter-writing campaign to AON Corp. and its CEO Gregory Case, it’s been lots and lots of correspondence. (Click HERE to read the original letter that started it all.) We’ve probably been responsible for killing a small forest. Dave’s been getting letters from pretty much everyone EXCEPT Mr. Case and their attorneys; instead, they’ve taken to writing everyone else except Dave, including the Attorneys General of Washington, New York and Connecticut, among others. Why, Dave even got a letter from Larry Lamade of Akin Gump, the NFL’s attorneys. Everyone writes letters and it creates a great paper trail so everyone knows what’s going on.

So it was quite a surprise when Dave received a very strange phone call last week (on Thursday, Dec. 4th) from an Edward Simpkins from the Department of Labor in DC. Apparently, the Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal had forwarded Dave’s information to the Dept. of Labor for review and somehow it ended up with Mr. Simpkins. Dave took notes from his short and cryptic conversation with Simpkins who mumbled his way through the short phone call. The general idea he conveyed was that because Dave signed his original retirement benefit documents as a Joint Annuity (with his wife, Heidi, as the designated beneficiary upon his death) rather than as a Single beneficiary, there was nothing more that could be done (?!!). Now none of us profess to be experts at disability benefits or retirement pensions but what the heck does the single or joint selection have to do with Dave getting a copy of his death benefit (or policy) in writing from his Plan Administrator (supposedly the NFLPA, his union).

After the phone call, Dave noticed that his caller ID indicated the call came from (301) 552-2014 – a Maryland number. But when he asked Mr. Simpkins for his number before hanging up, he hesitantly gave him his “office” number as (202) 693-8647 – a real DC number. All we know is that when we called that second number, you can barely make out a very garbled announcement message from Edward Simpkins mumbling something about Department of Labor (it took us a few calls to hear it all).

At first, we even thought it might have been another crank call but even now, we’re not completely sure of anything. Reverse Phone Number searches don’t confirm that either number comes from a government office. And many of the other retired players had already warned Dave that the Department of Labor has never expressed any interest in looking into the NFLPA’s benefits and retirement programs. In fact, for some strange reason, they seem to have consistently avoided or dissuaded any investigation or review of the entire plan. But one thing that just struck us as VERY odd: With everyone from Attorneys General all the way down the line to law office clerks, everyone but EVERYONE follows the CYA (Cover-Your-A**) Policy by always putting things in writing. It’s only when you don’t want any paper trail or accountability that you don’t write a letter.

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Wow! What’s a poor guy have to do just to get one straight answer around here?

When Dave sent of that letter to AON Corp. President/CEO Gregory Case (click HERE to read that post), we also made sure to CC: copies to several state Attorneys General as well as state Insurance Commissioners who may have direct or indirect jurisdiction over such matters. The responses are still coming in and one of the more interesting ones came from Connecticut State Attorney General Richard Blumenthal (click HERE to read his letter) who stated, “I agree with you that you should have received a copy of your disability policy describing the benefits and obligations that pertain to beneficiaries.”

What’s interesting is that Dave has yet to receive a direct answer to his letter from AON even though it was sent out back on September 25th! And Dave had informed Mr. Case in his letter that he was also inquiring as a shareholder in AON Corp.! Instead, the lawyers got all over it and responded to inquiries from the various state agencies while never once so much as responding directly to Dave. Of course, those letters also attempted to dismiss Dave’s simple inquiry for information as “mischaracterization.”

So it wasn’t too much of a surprise when the NFL’s law firm – our good friends over at Akin Gump – also jumped into the fray by writing to Connecticut Attorney General Blumenthal. (Mr. Blumenthal must be a pretty popular guy from what we can gather.) What did surprise us however was how the NFL had their attorneys get involved (we thought this was supposed to be an NFLPA problem). And the real surprise was the amount of paperwork that Larry Lamade (senior partner at Akin Gump) was able to provide directly to the Attorney General. Dave’s been asking his union, the NFLPA, for copies of much of this stuff for years. But when the big guys start to get interested, suddenly EVERYONE seems to jump on board and old documents seem to mysteriously re-appear rather quickly. We love it! And how is it that the NFL’s law firm manages to access Dave’s personal benefits file – AND send it all along to the Attorney General of Connecticut? Could it be that this whole benefits policy is such a hot potato that it’s got everyone’s attention suddenly?

Here’s the letter from Larry Lamade to Attorney General Richard Blumenthal (click on each page to enlarge it for easier reading):

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OK – At the end of September, we sent off a letter to the CEO Gregory Case of AON Corp. in Chicago asking for answers about a death benefit that’s supposed to provide our spouses with continuing benefits after we pass away. And we copied those letters to Attorneys General and Insurance Commissioners in several states as well as to Congressional leaders involved with investigating the NFL. (Read about it HERE and HERE.)

We’ve had some responses from a couple of Attorney General offices as well as Insurance Commissioners but absolutely no direct response from AON. So we were pleasantly surprised to get a letter from the Washington State Attorney General’s office along with a copy of the response they got back from Paulette Solinsky, general counsel for AON. (Click on each image to enlarge it for easier reading.)

So as usual, every time we ask for a simple answer to a simple question, ten more questions pop up. If you read the letter we sent to AON, we simply asked them about a death benefit policy that we believed they may have underwritten. We also asked Mr. Case to direct us to whoever may have been providing this benefit or policy if AON wasn’t providing this benefit. Not a particularly hard question to understand or fulfill. Or so we thought. But then, Ms. Solinsky so succinctly put it, “We have reviewed the issues raised by Mr. Pear and find that he mischaracterizes Aon Consulting’s relationship to the Bert Bell/Pete Rozelle NFL Retirement Plan.” (?!!)

What part of “If this is not the case, would you please notify me formally in writing as well as telling me who has been underwriting these benefit policies” did she not understand in the closing sentence of my letter?

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We just received this response from the Attorney General’s office in Washington State (Click on the letter to enlarge for easier reading):

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A week-and-a-half after sending out 13 letters to AON Corp. CEO Gregory Case and a long list of CC:’s, the US Postal Service has confirmed that the letters have all been delivered. (Click HERE to read the original letter.)

It was also pointed out to us that AON had been busted in Connecticut during that bid-rigging fiasco in 2005 and we didn’t want Connecticut to feel left out. So late last week, we sent out copies of the letter to the Connecticut Attorney General and their Insurance Commissioner. Three additional copies of the letter to AON were sent to Congressman John Conyers and Congresswomen Maxine Waters and Linda Sanchez (you may remember them from their leadership in the congressional NFL hearings).

We did already receive a prompt response from Insurance Commissioner Thomas Hampton in D.C. It’s posted below (as always, click on the image to enlarge it for reading). What’s curious is his reference to a Combined Insurance Company of America and an NFLPA Group Life. (Hint: Combined Insurance is headquartered in Chicago and its CEO, Doug Wendt, was appointed by AON.) We never mentioned those companies in our letters anywhere. So could there be an investigation already in motion? Who are those companies and what “policies” did THEY offer?
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Over the summer, the NFLPA offered a 4-month window for retired disabled players to apply or re-apply for their benefits. As many of you know, I was eventually approved for Inactive T&P (Total & Permanent) Disability benefits (but not Football Degenerative T&P benefits). We’re still continuing to file our objections to the Review Board over my original disqualification since 1983. (You can read more about this by clicking HERE and HERE.)

After a lot of foot-dragging, NFLPA Benefits Director, Paul Scott, finally sent me a letter alluding to a “Death Benefit” that many of us had apparently signed up for years ago when we took retirement. This benefit is supposed to provide those meager benefits to our surviving spouses when we die. (Read Paul Scott’s letter to me HERE.) But in spite of years and years of taking unitemized deductions for this “benefit” and even going as far as to hire AON to work out the actuarial factors for each of the players, I can’t seem to find anyone who has so much as looked at a policy or document that spells out the terms of this “benefit.”

So last week, we decided to compose a letter directly to Mr. Gregory Case, current President & CEO of AON Corp. in Chicago. AON (AOC) is a publicly traded company on the New York Stock Exchange and has ties to the MacCaskey family and the Chicago Bears. Mr. Case was installed as the new CEO in April 2005 after the company admitted to bid-rigging and price-fixing in three states (in all fairness, so was Marsh & McLennan Cos.), resulting in a public apology to shareholders along with a tidy fine of $190 million. (Read that story in the International Herald Tribune HERE.) While AON may or may not be the Company holding our death benefits ploicy (and money), their deep involvement with the NFL and NFLPA on so many levels would indicate that they should be able to provide me with more information than I’ve received so far from the NFLPA. While we were at it, we also went ahead and CC:’ed the letter to a list of several other potentially interested parties, including the Insurance Commissioners in several states as well as the Attorneys General in several states (many were states where I’ve lived in over the years since I first started applying for my benefits). CEO Greg Case was brought in as a change-agent to replace former CEO Patrick Ryan after the Company settled their charges.

The letters were sent out last Thursday (Sept. 25th) by USPS Priority Mail and it looks like 10 of the letters have already been delivered today.

The CC: list is at the bottom of my letter. Here’s my letter (click on each image to enlarge it for easier reading.)

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