'Tis the "season" for all the talk about health care reform, and whether or not it is going to be a good idea for this country. It is also the season for the great American past time, football. In an opinion article published in the New York Times, "Health Care Reform...for the N.F.L.", Stefan Fatsis discusses how the National Football League is past due for some reform in their medical system as well.
Although the players in the National Football League receive excellent treatment, the article says that the only main goal is to just diagnose them, fix them, and return them to the field. Apparently many players like to play down their injuries. Some of the doctors in the NFL will "downplay" an injury too. The article gave a couple different examples, mainly on the Denver Broncos team, how players were injured at first and not given proper care and hurt later on in the season, or were told their injury was not as severe and were injured worse later during the season.
It turns out, the agreement for the players in the league right now is not too fair. The article goes on to explain how there needs to be some reform on the next contract for the players' union (which is being signed in 2010). Some of the changes the columnist suggests would be that there should be a league wide medical system, and not just team doctors for individual teams, doctors should tell players about injuries before they let club officials know, players should be able to view their medical records whenever they want (instead of just twice a year), and players should report any injury to the league. The columnist also feels that grievance procedures should be reformed.
This seems to be a little bit different of an article to post for this blog sight, but it is a health policy that needs to be taken into consideration when the NFL players' union goes to resign their health contracts in 2010. And if you think about it, it relates a lot to the what kind of health care issues we, the taxpayers, need to think about in reference to our nation wide health care plan option.
Do you believe that the NFL needs some health care reform of their own?
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This is definitely an interesting and different topic in the field of health reform. I feel that the current policy or game plan for injured athletes is working just fine. We have to keep in mind that these athletes have signed multimillion dollar contracts for numerous seasons at a time. With that in mind they are already committed to the team after signing that contract. On the contrary, some athletes may say they are injured or are consistently in pain in the attempt to 'play the system'. In other words, they will sign the contract, say they were hurt in practice, and sit on the bench with a hefty paycheck all year long. While I think that an athlete's health is very important it is also an aspect that the current policy has handled quite well so far. If an athlete is absolutely too hurt to play it is going to be obvious after a visit to the team doctor. For example, an athlete with a torn ACL is not going to be seeing the field that season because they won't be able to even run let alone fight through the pain. Maybe the policy should be that athletes who sustain an injury have to sit out a minimum of one game in the attempt to get back to full health?
ReplyDeleteI also think this is a very interesting topic in terms of the healthcare reform. While I do not think an injury should ever be discredited in terms of seriousness, looking at the player's paycheck and the severity of the injury they claim is important as well. These athletes are making millions of dollars for their sport, and using an injury to avoid playing but still getting paid would be something to strongly consider.
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