Dave Pear's Blog

By now, many of you have now been receiving your letters about another new “joint-venture” program between the NFL and the NFLPA from their Player Care Foundation. This one’s for a “Neurological Care Program Benefit.” We’ve already been receiving a lot of comments (putting it mildly) from our readers.

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Dear Larry -

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I read your letter of July 9th, 2010 to Dave. I have a few questions of my own I’d like to ask. (Read the previous post by clicking HERE.)

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A couple of months after sending a letter with questions to Mary-Ann Fleming (Director of Disability Benefits for the Bert Bell/Pete Rozelle NFL Players Retirement Plan) and Larry Lamade (of Akin Gump), I finally received this response from Larry Lamade earlier in the week. You can read my original questions on that earlier post by clicking HERE.

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Dear Roger Goodell,

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Thank you for signing the $200.00 reimbursement check for my total left hip replacement of April 29, 2008. Boy, it sure did take a long time but I guess it’s better that nothing. By the way, I’ve had 2 more surgeries since then. On August 11, 2009 I had 4-3½ inch screws along with 4 nuts and 2 bars removed from my spine at L3-4. And on March 4, 2010 I also had a hydrocele repair. I have more out-of-pocket expenses for these surgeries. (Click on the thumbnail to see this big check.)

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At the beginning of May, I had mailed and posted a series of questions to Mary-Ann Fleming, the NFL’s Director of Player Benefits. (Click HERE to read the original questions I’d submitted.) A week later, I received a short letter from them informing me that she was away on business and then on vacation. Nearly a month after sending out my first letter, I finally received a 3-page response via FedEx. (By the way, what’s the deal with all that? No one gets back to me quickly and when you do, there are no answers to my questions. You take over 2 years to finally decide to send me a second reimbursement check for $202.68 as your share of a $60,000 surgery. Yet you have paid assistants to respond that you’re away on vacation. And everything’s done by FedEx – at our plan’s expense, no less.)

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Over a week ago, I wrote and sent a letter with questions for Mary-Ann Fleming, Director of Disability Benefits for our Bert Bell/Pete Rozelle NFL Players Retirement Plan. You can read that earlier post by clicking HERE. The letters were mailed out by USPS Priority Mail to her and Larry Lamade at Akin Gump. Copies of the letter were also sent out to the NFLPA representatives on the Disability Board, as well as Roger Goodell (Chairman of the Disability Board) and DeMaurice Smith at the NFLPA.

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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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It looks like the NFL and its Commissioner Roger Goodell are swift and decisive when it comes to handing out punishment for players who step out of line with the League’s high standards of conduct. In keeping with these high standards, just who is supposed to be handing out punishment when the NFL steps out of line? And just how severe should the consequences be?

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Dave,

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Most of you have been following our recent coverage on the missing Severance Pay that more and more retired players have come to realize that they’ve never received. The NFLPA has just put together an outline of steps that former players can follow on Severance Pay. Andre Collins, Director for Player Benefits, submitted these instructions this morning.

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We swear – we’re NOT making any of this stuff up! Looks like we are now officially going into CYA time and people are coming forward with more documentation on Burt Grossman’s missing $40,000 Severance Pay. These documents just arrived this morning from Burt’s attorney, Daniel Anastasia, via Burt. We hope the PA continues to take ownership of this and starts to question the issue of Severance Pay for all the other retired players. A lot of them are also only now discovering that they haven’t been paid (including Lionel James who has gone through an almost identical stonewall process like Burt). Be sure to read our prior post this morning from Irv Cross that includes the language in the ’82 contract covering Severance from that agreement – click HERE to read it.

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First the press release that just hit the AP newswire today:

NFL Starts Spinal Program for Players

The NFL is starting a spinal treatment program for retired players.

The league will make specialists available at five hospitals across the United States to evaluate and treat retirees with spinal injuries.

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Five months after Dave first started applying his application for reimbursement from the NFL under their Hip Replacement Program and almost 2 months after we first wrote about it back in November, Dave finally received a real check today! (Read about Dave’s Hip Replacement T-Shirt by clicking HERE.)

(Click on images to enlarge for reading.)

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I’ve been following Dave’s ongoing attempts to get a check out of the NFL’s hip replacement program over the past couple of months. I’ve been amazed at Dave’s patience as Valerie Cross (the NFL’s Director of Player Benefits) and Eden Haloway, Mary-Ann Fleming (the NFL’s Manager of Player Benefits) kept requesting more and more details and copies of bills related to Dave’s injuries and hip surgery.

“Man, oh man,” I thought to myself. “As much as they’re wanting to know, they’re really going to help him out and finally issue him a decent check to cover some of his costs.” They had Dave send doctors’ names and numbers, copies of his various physical therapy bills, medications and other related expenses in great detail. In all, Dave must have spent well over a week’s worth of his time on the phone and going through files to send her everything she asked for.

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