A year later, we’re still learning more about the Legacy Fund every day and most of it isn’t coming from the NFL or the NFLPA. Disability Attorney John Hogan recently came across the one retired player receiving disability benefits who actually also qualified for some Legacy Benefits. Will wonders never cease? We’re passing along John’s observations to keep retirees informed.
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Also attached is a copy of another document that Dave received last week actually detailing the ins-and-outs of adding Medicare Prescription Benefits. Seems they’re better at communicating how to get on the government dole than sending better instructions for navigating their own benefits system and process. Unbelievable!
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Here’s John Hogan’s latest information on the Legacy Fund first:
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A lot of guys on NFL disability have been asking questions about whether they’re entitled to receive any additional benefit from the Legacy Fund. The simple answer appears to be that most will not. Unless a player had a long career AND the amount of his benefit credits PLUS the Legacy Fund benefits is greater than the monthly amount he receives on disability, will that player get an increase. The only case where I have seen this happen is where the player is on the lowest-paying classification of Total and Permanent Disability – formerly known as “Inactive” – and has had his benefit permanently reduced by 25% for taking a one-time early pension draw AND if that player had a lengthy career (i.e. – 12 years in one case).
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Also, if the Legacy Benefit calculation comes to more than the amount of the monthly disability benefit, the player will only receive the additional difference – the total Legacy Benefit is not paid IN ADDITION TO the disability benefit.
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And here’s a copy of the NFL’s instruction sheet on Medicare Prescription Plan. We’ve uploaded this 6-pager to Scribd for easy viewing and to make it downloadable for printing. You can also click the Enlarge icon in the lower right corner of the menu at the bottom of the viewing screen to go Full Screen for easier reading (just hit the ESC key to close):
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NFL on Medicare & SSI
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THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS
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Tuesday, 15 May 2011
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BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
COMMENTARY
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Steve Bartkowski wikipedia
Steve Bartkowski, a newly elected member of the National Football Foundation’s College Hall of Fame, is one of hundreds of former National Football League players who are suing their former employers for what best can be described as negligence for allegedly not telling league employees, the players, of the possible long time impact on the body of playing football. Bartkowski, who played with the Atlanta Falcons and the Los Angeles Rams between 1975 and 1985, has an assortment of ailments that came from playing.
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Bartkowski “signed up” for the lawsuit for family reasons although the suicide of a former teammate Ray Easterling in April may have played a role.
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“I signed up basically for my wife,” said Bartkowski. “I just don’t want her having to wheel my chair towards the sunset so I can watch it set. I am more concerned about her and her quality of life if things should take a turn for the worst. I mean I got dinged as many times probably a lot of these other guys.”
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Bartkowski looks physically good for a man of about 60. But he has many scars from playing the game.
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“I think for the first time we are starting to see some of the effects, the long term effects. The game. I don’t know if we tracked injuries like they are tracking them now. And I think we have some evidence that people can point to and say this is what has happened,” said Bartkowski. “I am all for trying to make the game safer for guys who are playing or at least make them aware of what some of the long-term sort of debilitating effects can be.
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“What have I got? Well, I got two knees replaced after nine operations. I am sure there are some other things that are approaching. I have a bad hip, I got a left elbow that doesn’t work very good anymore. But I think we know what we sign up for. It is a physical game. You are in a car wreck every weekend that you play in and sometimes multiple car wrecks, so it’s part of the issue. I hope it doesn’t end up shaping the game going forward but I do hope the guys who need help get it from the appropriate sources.”
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The “appropriate sources” should start with the National Football League Players Association since benefits are collectively bargained between the owners and players. The NFLPA did a rotten job protecting the membership’s long-term future by asking for “Money Now” in 1982 and has always been more concerned about money than long time health issues. The players played games on awful surfaces in places like Philadelphia and Houston yet that didn’t seem to be a concern of the NFLPA.
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“I think so (referring to both the NFL owners and the NFLPA), those are the guys that are driving the bus on this,” said Bartkowski. “I think the NFL has acknowledged that there are some long tern effects from the game and I think that is the reason for some of the safety measures that Commissioner (Roger) Goodell is trying to implement and sort of evolved the game.”
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Players from Bartkowski’s era got as much as five years of medical benefits after they were cut or retired. Some of the Bartkowski era players are now living in the United States safety net and receive Social Security Disability Insurance and are on Medicare long before their 65th birthday.
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“I don’t think we even got five (years) when I was playing, it may be that now,” he recalled.
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“The new collective bargaining agreement, I think, covers a lot more than what the old one did.”
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So who is responsible for the care of the discarded players?
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“That’s a great question,” said Bartkowski. “I think the major thing in the (law)suit was how much did the NFL know about the concussion issue and when did they know it? I think that to me is really the issue. If there were guys out there doing the head banging and didn’t know the long term effects could cause early onset dementia and some of the other things that we are seeing out there in the retired player community, I think somebody is liable for that I would think. Not only the player when he signs his contract, when he signs up for that sort of a violent sport but at the same time the issue is what did they know and when did they know it?”
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Bartkowski played with Ray Easterling for three years in Atlanta between 1975 and 1977. Eastlerling shot himself to death in April. Two former NFL players Easterling and Junior Seau committed suicide within a month of one another.
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Easterling was 62 and seemed to have the same physical and mental health issues that face many former players. Reportedly he suffered from depression and insomnia. He underwent 25 different surgeries and had a hip replacement. In March 2011, Easterling was diagnosed with dementia in March 2011.
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“I had a former teammate of mine who was in the early stages of dementia, Ray Easterling. He just decided he wasn’t going to put his family through it and he ended up taking his own life” said Bartkowski. “I watched Ray going downhill. He was one of the hardest hitting guys. He never backed down on a drill and never backed down on a Sunday afternoon. He was a great teammate but I don’t think he had any idea what he was sacrificing later on in the latter stages of his life.
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“I talked to him, he asked me to write a letter in support of his case and I just looked at his chronology of his slide down the hill and was happy to write the letter and say what I saw. Ray was one of the smartest, sharpest guys that I ever teed it up with so to speak and to watch him where he couldn’t carry on a conversation was very difficult.”
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Memory loss is a common thread in the discarded players’ community.
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“I’ve got some of that too,” said Bartkowski. “It is hard for me to remember a lot of things.”
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The lawsuits have been filed, consolidated and will eventually go to court. Nothing is going to be settled anytime soon but the game of football figures to be put on trail.
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“I’m sure it will,” said Bartkowski of how long the lawsuit may take before it is finally settled. “There are extenuating circumstances in all these different cases. But I think if it does nothing more than move the game to safer turf and safer territory for the guys who love it and would have played it if they didn’t get paid to play it. I was one of those guys, I loved the thrill of Sunday afternoon and being out there and playing with the boys. I didn’t know what the long term effects might be and didn’t really care about them at that point in time.
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“If we can make the game safer and make it a little more easier on you in your twilight years then I am all for that.”
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Evan Weiner
Evan Weiner, the winner of the United States Sports Academy’s 2010 Ronald Reagan Media Award, is an author, radio-TV commentator and speaker on “The Politics of Sports Business.” His book, “The Business and Politics of Sports, Second Edition” is available at www.bickley.com or amazonkindle. He can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
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THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS
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Wednesday, 9 May 2011
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BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
COMMENTARY
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It is that time of the year when school boards have to get budgets in place for the new school calendar and the 2012-13 school year. The people who do the budgets and the people who vote on the budgets probably aren’t too worried about the 2012 high school football season but there will come a time when school districts will have to evaluate the value of fielding junior high and high school football teams.
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There is evidence that football is causing major health problems for former players later on in life. Some National Football League players have been quite vocal about post-career problems, which include depression, thoughts of suicide, family problems, bankruptcy, homelessness and for some – like Dave Duerson and Junior Seau – suicide.
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Following Seau’s death, a few former players went public with their post football plight on Dave Pear’s Blog. Pear has been fighting for years for the NFL to get medical benefits to pay for the injuries he says he suffered during his career. The injuries were numerous.
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The comments should be noted by school boards and others with a passing interest in watching football whether it is Friday night high school contests or Monday Night Football featuring two NFL teams.
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One-time Pittsburgh Steelers player Reggie Harrison, now known as Kamal Ali Salaam-El wrote, “Since we don’t have a crystal ball, we may never know what was going through Junior Seau’s mind. I have yet to entertain the thought of taking my life, but I can relate to the pain that a lot of us are going through. I take 10 methadone, 4 oxycodone and 2 ml of liquid oxycodone daily, and sometimes the pain still overtakes me. I just pray that I can hold on and lean on my fellow alumni if I feel that I can’t go on. My heart goes out to Junior and his family and I hope he has found Peace. I sure haven’t found it.”
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Former Los Angeles Rams player Rick Hayes responded to the former Steelers by writing, “Kamal, I believe we played against each other in the L.A. Coliseum during our Rookie Year in 1974 Pre-Season. I, too, have been in pain today following the news of Junior Seau, and I find myself wondering about the possibility of CTE being the cause. For the last month, I have missed two Brain Scans and MRIs because of fear and pain. Several months ago, I finally detoxed from a daily dose of over 1000 mg of oxycodone via the Subuxone method. I think of suicide almost daily. There were other pills too. I feel much better now but still question the pain and sleep disturbances.
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“In your note, I found the realization that these medications treat and cover our emotional traumas as much as our physical pain. And eventually, they stop working due to our Opioid Tolerance. I wish you, our fellow Former Players, and myself, a path through all this confusion. We are all one, but unfortunately the NFLPA is failing in providing us guidance and assistance. They are aware of our PAIN and ADDICTIONS. Now they are having SUICIDES thrown in their faces. When will they act truthfully and completely? The BLOOD is on the OWNERS and NFLPA’s hands.”
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Janet McCoy speaking on behalf of her husband Mike, who played for Green Bay, responded with a different viewpoint: the position of a wife with a suffering husband. She said, “I received a call from my husband yesterday when he received the news of another player’s death. Since Mike is in assisted living for his dementia, all he could do was weep when I answered the phone. I knew why he was crying even before he spoke. How many tears do the players, wives and families have to shed before the NFL takes notice? I would like to suggest that the NFL have a plan payment for mental health therapy after this. Most men are not able to express themselves when this tragic diagnosis is received. Blessings to all our families.”
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Former NFL players who have been broken down and left on the curb have a place to vent frustrations. The awful truth for the former players who are suffering is that the National Football league owners never let them down; their own Players Association is the culprit. The National Football League Players Association was so focused on just getting money that there were not secondary concerns about players’ safety or post career medical and insurance benefits. The owners and players collectively bargained agreements, and whether it was 1974, 1982 or 1987, the players’ negotiators — and in turn the players’ agents — wanted liberal free agency rules and money.
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That was a mistake for about 97 percent of the players. The owners legally are not bound to give players extended medical benefits. That should have been a collectively bargained issue. Broken down players are living in the government safety net of Social Security Disability Insurance and Medicare.
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It may be those are some of the lucky players who survived the funnel and made it into the National Football League. There are probably hundreds of thousands of players from the college, high school and semi-pro ranks who have suffered severe injuries and didn’t have a players association – albeit a weak group like the NFLPA – who never got a football pension or a partial medical plan and now are depending on government assistance for life-altering injuries.
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But there really isn’t much about the plight of high school players who are suffering from football injuries that is documented.
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High school football remains king in certain sections of the country but what would happen if former high school players suffering from devastating injuries started suing schools? Would school boards who are either self-insured or pay a huge premium keep the games going?
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That is a difficult question but that question may come an awful lot sooner than anyone thinks. The National Football League, along with a helmet manufacturer, is being sued by hundreds of former players who contend that the league didn’t look after players’ health during careers and in post-career life. The lawsuit involves just the NFL and former players at this point.
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Many people play football from the youth level on up to the pros. Many of those players will never have an opportunity to sue school boards even though the life-altering injuries took place on some high school football field.
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Football has always been a brutally tough sport.
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It seems the issue of players’ safety was settled in 1905 after President Theodore Roosevelt pressured a few college presidents into cleaning up the game after the deaths of 18 players in college games and the maiming of others.
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But did President Roosevelt and the college presidents really clean up the game or was the game “properly” sanitized, with the injuries swept under the rug?
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Until 2010, players’ safety didn’t seem to have been much of a priority on any level, whether it was high school, college or the National Football League. The NFL was very slow to get into the players’ safety issue, and the league finally started addressing head issues 105 years after President Roosevelt made the issue of player safety part of his presidency.
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The NFL is urging all 50 states to take a very close look at head injuries suffered in high school and other football programs for children. Whether it is lip service or not, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell sent out 44 letters to states urging them to enforce strict surveillance of head injuries. The league is continuing to beef up head injury protocol, but that is for future generations.
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The league is not taking responsibility for past injuries.
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But there is now a lawsuit and even though the players have directed their complaints against the National Football League, all of football is really on trial. That includes youth level, junior high school, high school, and college football. If the NFL and a helmet manufacturer lose this case, the whole structure of football will be shaken from the NFL down to kids’ football. The NFL depends on kids’ football as a feeder system into junior high school, then high school and colleges. The NFL gets ready-made players with years of experience. That could all change because school districts may decide running a football program is too costly in terms of insurance premiums and safety.
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If the school boards get rid of football, Troy Aikman’s words last February, looking at the NFL’s future, may be prophetic: “The long-term viability, to me anyway, is somewhat in question as far as what this game is going to look like 20 years from now.”
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Evan Weiner
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THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS
.
NFL and NFLPA’s labor woes may not be over yet
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Tuesday, 02 August 2011
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
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The National Football League owners have a labor agreement with the present members of the reconstituted National Football League Players Association but it appears that the league still has problems with the players association’s stance on not helping out former players with their medical needs years after their last game in the league. The league apparently informed Carl Eller’s legal team on Friday that the-then decertified National Football League Players Association decided not to take a $500 million offer over ten-years to get retirees life football medical benefits and an uptick in pensions as part of the recently completed collective bargaining agreement.
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THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS
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NFL lockout 2011: Why are Gov. Christie and other politicians strangely silent?
Thursday, 21 April 2011
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
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The National Football League Draft is on the horizon and there has been a deafening silence from a group of people who actually have some power to exert some influence on what appears to be stagnating talks between the owners, who have locked out their employees — the players — and the players’ representatives.
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People like New Jersey Governor Chris Christie who has no problem yelling at his employers in public settings — New Jersey voters — has gone mute on the issue. Christie is no better than Texas Congressman Lamar Smith who doesn’t think Congress ought to be involved in the dispute or President Barack Obama. Christie is in a governor’s league that includes both Democrats (Andrew Cuomo of New York, Jerry Brown of California, Mark Dayton of Minnesota among others) and Republicans (Rick Scott of Florida, John Kasich of Ohio, Scott Walker of Wisconsin, Rick Snyder of Michigan, Rick Perry of Texas, Jan Brewer of Arizona, Bobby Jindal of Louisiana) who should be out there jawboning NFL owners to get a deal done with the players.
All the governors are cutting costs so you figure the potential of losing money because there will be no business conducted because of the lockout would stoke their combative fires.
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But it hasn’t.
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THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS
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24 March 2011
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BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
COMMENTARY
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Washington Post sports columnist Sally Jenkins asked a question in a column written after the NFL lockout started on March 11. It was a simple query that the writer could not answer. “Where is it written that (NFL) owners are entitled to the lion’s share of revenues from structures we help build and support?”
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THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS
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23 March 2011
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BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
COMMENTARY
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(New York, N. Y.) — Pat Matson has a very clear interest in the National Football League owners-National Football League Players Association or correctly the former National Football League Players Association as the players have decertified as a “union.” Matson was a player in both the American Football League with Denver and Cincinnati and when the American Football League-National Football League completed their merger in 1970, Matson moved to the NFL with Cincinnati.
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Matson was the Cincinnati Bengals player representative in the brief 1974 NFL strike. Matson is one of the players who have been left behind by the very players association where he was once a players representative and walked a picket line in 1974.
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THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS
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Thursday, 17 March 2011
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BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
COMMENTARY
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As the National Football League hired lawyers and attorneys from the decertified National Football League Players Association game-planned for an April court date in Minneapolis where they will argue over what went wrong in their collective bargaining talks and why there is no new Collective Bargaining Agreement in place, Gene Atkins will go about his daily struggle at his Texas home.
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The 46-year-old Atkins has some better days than others but struggles with his concentration and focus and his constant headaches and pain. Doctors said he has permanent brain damage from playing football. Atkins was once of the most intimidating players on the New Orleans Saints, a safety who hit hard and wanted to put fear in offensive players.
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But that was a long time ago. Atkins last played for the Miami Dolphins in 1996 and then retired. His life soon unraveled. There was a domestic dispute involving his wife, an arrest, business failures, depression, constant headaches and by 2000, the thoughts of suicide. Atkins’ post-career problems seem to follow a pattern, a rather disturbing set of circumstances that is not all that unusual among ex-NFL players. He is living off the United States safety net of Social Security and Medicare despite his young age like other former NFL players, a safety net that might cost taxpayers a billion dollars for discarded, disabled players.
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The third and final part of Dr. Stoller’s work with Wayne Hawkins and HBOT (Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy). Dr. Stoller’s post talks about how a big industry – the big multinational pharmaceutical companies – have managed to keep HBOT hidden from the public and left out of qualification for Medicare reimbursement. Wait – does that sound like another coverup we know about? Nah!
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Wayne & Sharon Hawkins,
Wayne Hawkins |
The news has been incredibly blunt in these hard times: Medicare and Social Security could be hitting the wall in 8 years. It’s going to hit everyone hard, especially the baby boomers and those who can ill afford to lose it. For many, what little assistance they might get from Medicare and SSI is all they have to fall back on. And many of us have friends and family who have already been totally wiped out financially by a medical catastrophe.

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Posted by
RobertinSeattle |
Categories:
Robert's Post | Tagged:
Dave Pear,
DeMaurice Smith,
Do No Evil,
GAO Audit,
Gene Upshaw,
Government Accountability Office,
Medicare,
NFL,
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell,
NFLPA,
Roger Goodell,
Social Security disability |

HARLEY SOLTES / THE SEATTLE TIMES
Here’s a copy of my Medicare expense summary from 8/1/06 to 12/11/08 for a Total Cost of $231,069.83. I’m scheduled to have another spine surgery in March 2009 to remove 4 screws and some other cleanup work on my spine for pain radiating down my right leg (approx. cost $75,000).
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Our friend, Disability Attorney John Hogan, added some clarification to Tony’s urgent message. Scroll to the bottom of this post to see John’s comments.

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