Dave Pear's Blog

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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We’ll continue to follow Wayne’s – and George’s – progress over the next months.

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Many of you have followed Brent Boyd’s years of fighting with the NFL for his earned disability benefits. Brent has kept us updated on his current appeal to the Disability Board for a new review of his case. Brent now has more medical evidence from recognized clinics like The Amen Clinic to support his case of football-related disability.

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In one recent conversation, Brent used a brilliant analogy: “Imagine if today’s young generations of minorities went back to all those great people who fought for civil rights in the 50′s and 60′s – often with their lives – and told them, ‘Thanks for all you did for us. Oh – and by the way, you guys still have to ride at the back of the bus, use a separate bathroom and drink out of that water fountain over there!’ That’s exactly the way the NFL is treating its retired veterans.”

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Current players get larger contracts with easier pension qualifications while the retired players keep getting sent to the back of the bus. And just as often (as you’re about to see in some of Brent’s documents), they still keep making up the rules against you when things don’t go their way. Brent’s attorneys filed an appeal on his last rejected application and just as it’s coming up for trial, the Disability Board decides they want ANOTHER doctor to examine him AND they secretly reject his claim once again. After three other doctors of their choosing had already ruled in Brent’s favor. And who’s front and center in all of this? The Groom Law Group. The same people who WROTE the plan and are now helping the NFL and the Disability Board continue to re-define the rules to deny him his earned benefits. A few years back, retired players were told that if you had already qualified for Social Security Disability (most people know how difficult it is to qualify for SSI), you would automatically “qualify” for NFL benefits. But then “discretionary” qualifications got added back into the process in side deals made between Gene Upshaw and Harold Henderson.

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Last week, we received a couple of copies of the current Bert Bell/Pete Rozelle NFL Players Retirement Plan (released in April 2009) from different sources. After reviewing and comparing them, we’ve confirmed that we have an accurate copy of the plan and we’re posting it here for everyone.

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We’ve uploaded the entire document on Scribd for easier access and viewing. (Click on the FULL SCREEN button to enlarge it for easier navigation – hit the ESC key to close. You can also click the DOWNLOAD button to save a PDF copy for printing and reading.)

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And just as with that NFLPA 2009 LM-2,  if you find any interesting items to point out, please feel free to share them with everyone in the Comments Section.

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With things continuing to heat up in the off-season between the NFLPA and the NFL during a no-CBA year, the real issues that continue to at the forefront for retired players will never change: disability and pension reform, as well as access to medical care after football. These issues have made their way into the mainstream media and have certainly gotten the attention of our representatives on Capitol Hill. Nonetheless, a whole new set of apologists have come on the scene to point fingers at the messengers. In recent months, we’ve started to see more attack posts blaming the messengers for not coming up with solutions. To answer some of these people – at least in part – we haven’t even begun to point out everything that’s wrong yet! And if you can only waste your time criticizing everyone else, maybe you might consider putting up a few suggestions of your own? Or maybe the NFL’s got your tongue?

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We’ll use that as an introduction to today’s post. Over his lifetime, Irv Cross has been involved with football at almost every level both on and off the field, as well as with athletics in general. As one of football’s senior spokesmen, Irv’s seen and learned a lot over the years.

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Irv recently sent in one of his ideas on health insurance for all retired players – it makes so much sense that we can understand why no one’s thought about it yet.

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This just came in over the wire regarding the new class action lawsuit with the NFL and NFL Films. The courts in Minnesota have upheld the suit and is allowing it to proceed. Here’s the press release along with a copy of the Order Denying the NFL’s Motion to stop the lawsuit posted on Scribd for easier access and viewing. (Click on the FULL SCREEN button to enlarge it for easier navigation – hit the ESC key to close. You can also click the DOWNLOAD button to save a PDF copy for printing and reading. )

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Retired NFL Players Record First Victory Against National Football League

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Court Allows Players to Proceed with Claims

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Wow! We’ve spent some time looking over that NFLPA 2007 LM-2 Filing that they had to turn in to the U.S Dept. of Labor in May 0f 2008. It’s been interesting pulling out .details of how “our union” spends “our money.” We posted some of our first tidbits (click HERE) and then even discovered that the Director of Human Resources had pulled down close to $200,000 that year (click HERE).

But the document was so big that we struggled to find a simple way to put the whole thing up online for everyone to read. We finally decided to break the entire 900+ pages into five sections for easier storage and viewing. Here’s a short guide to what’s in each of the five sections:

• Part 1 – The first section contains general summaries of: assets, liabilities, income and expenses (insights into the high life);
• Part 2 – This is the first of three sections that disclose royalty and licensing payments to players etc.;
• Part 3 – This is the second of three sections that disclose royalty and licensing payments to players etc.;
• Part 4 – This is the third of three sections that disclose royalty and licensing payments to players etc.
• Part 5 – The final section covers general expenses such as overhead, document shredding, vendors etc. as well as royalty and licensing income.
  

And here are some basic navigation instructions to get around this online document viewer:

Everything you need is at the top of the viewing window including the back and forward buttons to advance back-and-forth from page-to-page. And of course, you can also use the Page Up and Page Down keys as well as the Home and End keys on your keyboard to navigate the document. You can enlarge the window for easier viewing by clicking on the Expand Window button located in the upper far right corner of the navigation bar (click on it again to reduce it back to the smaller size). And you can even search the document by clicking on the small search button just to the left of the Enlarge button. (Or a full Search bar is available after you expand the viewing window; you can then type your search word(s) into this window.) To navigate to a page faster, click on the Page Navigation button and you can get to a page simply by clicking on it.

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