
Insurance market for football evaporating, causing major threat for NFL - Osiris30
http://www.espn.com/espn/story/_/id/25776964/insurance-market-football-evaporating-causing-major-threat-nfl-pop-warner-colleges-espn
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lordnacho
Insurance is useful to spread the cost for things that are:

\- Rare, but predictable in a statistical sense, ie x% of people will claim
for y amount, and actuarial tables say so.

\- Expensive to compensate. This is why we need to spread the risk.

\- Where's it's hard to separate risk levels of different people. If not you
get adverse selection, where the average cost discourages the safer people,
leaving the less safe.

With the recent revelations about brain damage from tackle football, the
actuaries will rightly decide that their old tables are systematically biased.
More people will be allowed to claim that initially believed from the old
evidence. Furthermore, you can't just up the premium to compensate, you don't
know how bad it might get. There was that one study of old NFL players' brain
that concluded all of them (!) had damage to their brains. You also don't have
any idea what the courts will award, so you really have no clue how much to
ask for.

You also have to ask whether general health insurance will start asking people
whether they play football. (I'm not familiar with the US system). Much like
smoking, it might turn out to be a predictable high risk group, so that people
in it will have to pay prohibitively more for coverage, or not get covered at
all.

So if all the youth players can't get insurance, you have to wonder what will
happen to the professional game.

Perhaps there's some major rule change necessary. I'm not sure how I'd change
it to be similar but safer, something about the game seems to require tackling
to be football.

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benj111
Does rugby have the same problems?

Is it a problem that the helmet etc allow harder tackles? Much like boxing
gloves allow harder punches?

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JohnJamesRambo
There are studies that show that the hard helmets in American football are
actually less protective than the old leather helmets. The hard plastic
transmits the forces better in a fast impulse, the exact opposite of what you
want. They have been designed to prevent a skull getting crushed but that
isn’t a problem in football. Bad engineering and bad science perpetuated and
now the hard helmet is such a macho symbol of the nfl they will never change
it.

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mbesto
The big difference is that rugby players actively protect their head as part
of their play, whereas american football players have a perceived notion that
the helmet is providing all of the support. I wouldn't be surprised if there
are studies out there that show that Rugby players have less issues.

~~~
freewilly1040
I have to think you’ll still get quite a number of blows to the head over the
course of a rugby career though. Maybe not worse than football but possibly
still enough to reliably cause brain damage

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Animats
So the football industry now has to pay for their externalities. That's
progress.

~~~
ohithereyou
Now if only we could get the fossil fuel and agricultural industries to do
same.

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rwallace
What surprises me about this is the throwaway remark suggesting soccer and
hockey should be lumped in with American football. As I understand it, they
are not close to being in the same category for brain injury. What's the
justification for that remark?

~~~
kasey_junk
First let me start by saying that the research on brain injuries and sports is
very new and at times has shown fairly bad protocols in the studies, so
basically anything you read on the subject requires more specialist context
than I have.

That said, in reading about this for the last decade or so when it became a
top news item, its become apparent that most brain injury news stories don't
report on them very well and lump 2 drastically different kinds of brain
injury into the same bucket. Concussions and CTE. The former is caused by a
single traumatic event that can leave the brain damaged after it. The latter
is probably a repetitive injury, lots of small events that add up to brain
damage.

Gridiron football has the opportunity for both. Big shots on open field
runners frequently lead to concussions, but for CTE the most dangerous
position may be offensive linemen who infrequently take those high speed
impacts that get so much coverage. Instead on every play they are taking
repeated small blows to the head.

This is how soccer gets lumped in. There is at least circumstantial evidence
that the arial game in soccer and potentially even header practice can lead to
CTE at fairly high incidence rates. Given the lack of studies its unclear what
the level of danger is.

Hockey on the other hand has the opposite danger. Repeated small head hits are
rarer than in football but the incidence of traumatic concussion causing hits
is similar if not higher.

American football is the first sport to have major studies around brain injury
and those are fairly early days. As the other sports have more studies, and as
the studies get more data, I suspect we will find that all contact sports put
you at risk of brain injury and that football and rugby have higher incidence
of CTE than the others. But thats just guess work right now.

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lrm242
For soccer it’s trivial to remove the aerial aspect from the youth game, in
fact they’ve already done it. No headers, no throw ins, etc. Doing so doesn’t
do much to change the game at a youth level.

Football on the other hand... it’s pretty much impossible to take the CTE risk
away without ending up with another sport (rugby, Aussie rules, whatever).

IMO the long term viability of US football is not good.

~~~
freewilly1040
I would bet also that an effective soccer helmet is at least feasible.

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Scoundreller
Unless you're interested in the finer details, the article is very long.

Basically, the NFL should be fine, but even they may be self-insuring head
trauma nowadays.

For youth and school contact football programs, they are in jeopardy. Insurers
are increasing premiums and/or requesting waivers for all neurological
injuries. Some schools are already folding their teams. Probably with no end
in sight. Where will the next generation of players come from?

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MRD85
As a non-American, this is something that confuses me about American culture.
I see a lot of statements along the lines of "I should be able to do X if it
only harms me" but people also sue for X causing them damage.

If you play football then surely you accept certain risks onto yourself?

~~~
CM30
100% agreed. If you take a risk and it doesn't pay off, you shouldn't be able
to sue other people for your own decisions or mistakes.

Played an extreme sport (like skydiving or winggliding or snowboarding or
mountain climbing or anything else) and got injured? Tough, you decided to do
that, and you and your family should stop something looking for someone to
blame/sue because of it.

Same goes for any other hobby, whether it's fishing or caving or climbing the
outside of buildings for Instagram photos. You took a risk, and if it didn't
pay off, tough luck. You made that decision.

And this especially goes for anything illegal. Oh sure, there are exceptions
for legal activities if some party did do something wrong that caused it to
become more dangerous than expected (like say, telling kids to play American
football without padding and helmets on ice) then maybe there may be a case
that someone is to 'blame'. But if you break the law and get injured doing so,
well tough luck. You did something illegal and it worked out horribly, what
you'd expect?

For instance, I distinctly recall cases of burglars suing because they got
injured robbing some property or trespassing. That's ridiculous, and the whole
idea should be immediately tossed out with 'well if you didn't break into a
property you weren't supposed to be in, you wouldn't have got injured'.

People should take responsibility for their own mistakes and decisions, and
accept that sometimes things don't work out well and that it's merely part of
life.

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thatcat
Taking on a known extreme risk isn't the same as taking on an unknown risk
that exists due to the negligence of others.

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tunesmith
NFL should guarantee lifetime health coverage for anyone who plays one NFL
regular season game. If that craters salaries, so be it.

~~~
freewilly1040
They should do this, though as the article demonstrates good luck finding a
carrier to buy it from

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nradov
The NFL doesn't need a carrier. They can self insure and contract with a
health insurer to just do the claims administration.

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Jedi72
Surely in terms of brain injury American football is comparable to
professional boxing? If so, that sport seems to be doing right.

~~~
bryanlarsen
Boxing is the canonical example of a sport in decline. It went from most
popular sport in America to a minor sport today.

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MsMowz
Minor in what sense? It’s still one of the largest in terms of industry
revenue and viewership.

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jessaustin
Pro boxing can continue as a profitable spectacle without requiring lots of
"developmental" amateur participation. For decades, most boxers have been
drawn from relatively disadvantaged populations (recent immigrants,
minorities, etc.) who are less likely to have access to the sort of legal
representation required to address CTE liability. Who would they sue anyway?
Most boxing gyms are dumps that barely keep the lights on.

It's interesting to imagine football going that way. The college game would
probably have to disappear. (which it should do anyway because institutions of
learning should not concentrate most of their energies on frivolous contests
between indentured servants) High school teams might be replaced by AAU teams
run by shady coaches who could never be sued. I'm not sure where they would
play, however. A football field is a big investment that is always going to be
attached to some deep pockets. It's not clear that football could survive in
the same way that boxing survives.

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kingkawn
From public health perspective do not underestimate the importance of
gladiatorial sports in channeling society-wide aggressive impulses

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hcho
I'd like to see some data on that.

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russfink
Why is this on HN?

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lukeqsee
Because it's interesting to the HN users; I know I found it interesting a few
days ago when I read it.

HN isn't just about tech, startups, and the ilk. :)

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raverbashing
The solution seems clear: prohibit tackling in football or change the rules to
discourage it (for example no heavy helmets)

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paulie_a
IE just shutdown the sport. I personally have no personal opinion on that. But
tackling is pretty baked into the game.

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raverbashing
I don't see UFC being "shut down" with the safety rules they have added since
their beginning, so I'd say it's adaptable

Rugby doesn't have as many issues it seems

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hardlianotion
Not clear to me how much that has to do with lack of collected data on the
issue. Head trauma is a big and growing concern within rugby, with some high-
profile casualties. It is possible that we're just a few years later than
American Football to raise this concern.

