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Insurance Crisis for the NFL brewing (1 Viewer)

matttyl

matttyl

Footballguy
https://www.npr.org/2019/01/21/687255649/an-insurance-crisis-is-quietly-growing-for-football-in-america?fbclid=IwAR3tJjaynJOvqEtO9QbAwIB-WSH0WUz1wS5g5sz8vv47X6kSzqDF3ZPFL_k

The NFL has, over the last decade, been rocked by lawsuits over traumatic brain injuries, allegations of player domestic violence off the field and rule changes of their own. But according to an ESPN investigation, the sport is facing a problem that could threaten its very survival - lack of insurance. The NFL no longer has general liability insurance covering head trauma. And only one carrier is willing to cover teams for workman's comp.

Interesting stuff, to me - as I'm in the industry.  Do they end up "self insuring" the risk?

 
matttyl said:
https://www.npr.org/2019/01/21/687255649/an-insurance-crisis-is-quietly-growing-for-football-in-america?fbclid=IwAR3tJjaynJOvqEtO9QbAwIB-WSH0WUz1wS5g5sz8vv47X6kSzqDF3ZPFL_k

The NFL has, over the last decade, been rocked by lawsuits over traumatic brain injuries, allegations of player domestic violence off the field and rule changes of their own. But according to an ESPN investigation, the sport is facing a problem that could threaten its very survival - lack of insurance. The NFL no longer has general liability insurance covering head trauma. And only one carrier is willing to cover teams for workman's comp.

Interesting stuff, to me - as I'm in the industry.  Do they end up "self insuring" the risk?
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The bigger problem looming is when insurers stop covering their feeders, ie youth players.

 
matttyl said:
https://www.npr.org/2019/01/21/687255649/an-insurance-crisis-is-quietly-growing-for-football-in-america?fbclid=IwAR3tJjaynJOvqEtO9QbAwIB-WSH0WUz1wS5g5sz8vv47X6kSzqDF3ZPFL_k

The NFL has, over the last decade, been rocked by lawsuits over traumatic brain injuries, allegations of player domestic violence off the field and rule changes of their own. But according to an ESPN investigation, the sport is facing a problem that could threaten its very survival - lack of insurance. The NFL no longer has general liability insurance covering head trauma. And only one carrier is willing to cover teams for workman's comp.

Interesting stuff, to me - as I'm in the industry.  Do they end up "self insuring" the risk?
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Yes - The various football groups - Pop Warner, NFL etc start up single parent captives either domestically or off-shore.  I'm guessing NFL already has such a program for Workers Compensation and General Liability.    The captives are mini insurance companies that self-insured up to a certain retention/limit/  Then they find a willing reinsurance company that assumes excess of retention or you could have a risk sharing arrangement.  Common practice in the P&C insurance industry,

 
stlrams said:
Yes - The various football groups - Pop Warner, NFL etc start up single parent captives either domestically or off-shore.  I'm guessing NFL already has such a program for Workers Compensation and General Liability.    The captives are mini insurance companies that self-insured up to a certain retention/limit/  Then they find a willing reinsurance company that assumes excess of retention or you could have a risk sharing arrangement.  Common practice in the P&C insurance industry,
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They will only re-insure to a point where the expected future value of the premiums significantly outweigh the expected future value of the liabilities.  

 
Short Corner said:
They will only re-insure to a point where the expected future value of the premiums significantly outweigh the expected future value of the liabilities.  
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I know.  Theres limited support but reinsurance is typically spread out over various layers of limits and shared by reinsurers.  Since the insurance industry has plenty of surplus right now it means every time someone vacates a space there’s usually someone to replace them.  Supply and demand...

 
One of the many reasons the big four will eventually be replaced by Esports

In 20 years you will go into your own holodeck to watch others playing the role of the football players and you won’t be able to tel the difference. 

 
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I also wonder whether the league will really have that much liability going forward.

The cat is out of the bag now. Football leads to concussion. Concussion leads to long term brain damage. Not that everyone didn't know it already but now it's on the record. A player coming into the league now won't have much of a case 25 years from now if he gets CTE. He knows the risk and chooses to play a anyway. Combine that with the safety related rule changes and I don't see the NFL (or their insurers) having to write another 10 figure check.

The cost will still be high but I bet the league will still be able to find enough market capacity to fill their needed liability tower. Lots of markets out there willing to come up with a creative solution to make big premiums.

 
TLEF316 said:
I also wonder whether the league will really have that much liability going forward.

The cat is out of the bag now. Football leads to concussion. Concussion leads to long term brain damage. Not that everyone didn't know it already but now it's on the record. A player coming into the league now won't have much of a case 25 years from now if he gets CTE. He knows the risk and chooses to play a anyway. Combine that with the safety related rule changes and I don't see the NFL (or their insurers) having to write another 10 figure check.

The cost will still be high but I bet the league will still be able to find enough market capacity to fill their needed liability tower. Lots of markets out there willing to come up with a creative solution to make big premiums.
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Sigh

 
Not trying to be funny or cute,  dead serious.....curious what the WWE does when it comes to insurance, those guys are constantly getting hurt.

John Cena a huge star in that biz just hurt an ankle like days ago, now what?

I played in four HS alumni games, each time I had to sign a form releasing the school from anything if I got hurt. While never actually reading it I assume it had something about not suing.

How a guy can jump into a fire all on his own then after getting burned thinks he can sue somebody....???

 
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menobrown said:
I'm not an expert like you but I can read.

https://sports.yahoo.com/op-ed-one-flawed-study-irresponsible-reporting-launched-wave-cte-hysteria-150349666.html
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Yeah, I struggle with this book for many of the same reasons I struggle with McKee and the Boston University folks conducting the vast majority of autopsy case data on football players.  Cummings, in particular, is highly regarded, a serious scientist. And I gather he wrote most of the key sections in the book that establish responsible boundaries to what we know and don’t know.  

But the whole tenor of the book is unbecoming, frankly.  They clearly have an agenda, which to me is incompatible with the stoic, calculating, cold truths of trying to conduct good science.  Same criticism of McKee in particular at BU.  But it’s in the popular sphere now so we have to deal with it somehow.  

My point is the smart ones are remaining agnostic at this point. There’s scant, but certainly provocative, findings from the autopay series that has limited support in animal model testing and other investigations.  We aren’t at “truth” yet with big hills left to climb before we can say with confidence an association exists.  Likewise, it would be irresponsible to dismiss out of hand the potential for chronic neirodegenerative changes as a result of mTBI. The uncomfortable truth is we don’t know. 

The good news is we will.  Multiple international groups have benefited monetarily from the public attention and now are starting to get resources beyond their wildest dreams to further investigate the effects of concussion/mTBI/repetitive sub concussive blows on the brain, and I hope they apply a rigorous scientific process to design studies aimed at evolving this discussion beyond the click-bait 112/113 type articles that then irresponsibily leap to conclusions beyond the data they have.   

 
matttyl said:
https://www.npr.org/2019/01/21/687255649/an-insurance-crisis-is-quietly-growing-for-football-in-america?fbclid=IwAR3tJjaynJOvqEtO9QbAwIB-WSH0WUz1wS5g5sz8vv47X6kSzqDF3ZPFL_k

The NFL has, over the last decade, been rocked by lawsuits over traumatic brain injuries, allegations of player domestic violence off the field and rule changes of their own. But according to an ESPN investigation, the sport is facing a problem that could threaten its very survival - lack of insurance. The NFL no longer has general liability insurance covering head trauma. And only one carrier is willing to cover teams for workman's comp.

Interesting stuff, to me - as I'm in the industry.  Do they end up "self insuring" the risk?
Click to expand...
I’m guessing they have had layers in the past including global carriers, but the knowledge of the risk has probably resulted in demands for exclusions from the insurers. At some point they must have just stopped carrying. As a consequence self-insured layer has likely gone sky high. Good thing the league makes billions, eh?

 
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cobalt_27 said:
Yeah, I struggle with this book for many of the same reasons I struggle with McKee and the Boston University folks conducting the vast majority of autopsy case data on football players.  Cummings, in particular, is highly regarded, a serious scientist. And I gather he wrote most of the key sections in the book that establish responsible boundaries to what we know and don’t know.  

But the whole tenor of the book is unbecoming, frankly.  They clearly have an agenda, which to me is incompatible with the stoic, calculating, cold truths of trying to conduct good science.  Same criticism of McKee in particular at BU.  But it’s in the popular sphere now so we have to deal with it somehow.  

My point is the smart ones are remaining agnostic at this point. There’s scant, but certainly provocative, findings from the autopay series that has limited support in animal model testing and other investigations.  We aren’t at “truth” yet with big hills left to climb before we can say with confidence an association exists.  Likewise, it would be irresponsible to dismiss out of hand the potential for chronic neirodegenerative changes as a result of mTBI. The uncomfortable truth is we don’t know. 

The good news is we will.  Multiple international groups have benefited monetarily from the public attention and now are starting to get resources beyond their wildest dreams to further investigate the effects of concussion/mTBI/repetitive sub concussive blows on the brain, and I hope they apply a rigorous scientific process to design studies aimed at evolving this discussion beyond the click-bait 112/113 type articles that then irresponsibily leap to conclusions beyond the data they have.   
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Sorry Cobalt, but that sounds strikingly like the decades old statements from the tobacco companies. Playing football at the NFL level causes brain injury and permanent damage to at least some players. I agree that the dynamics of causation are not completely understood as yet, but I don't think there's a marginally educated, sane and honest person out there that doesn't know and accept that causal link. 

 
Catbird said:
Sorry Cobalt, but that sounds strikingly like the decades old statements from the tobacco companies. Playing football at the NFL level causes brain injury and permanent damage to at least some players. I agree that the dynamics of causation are not completely understood as yet, but I don't think there's a marginally educated, sane and honest person out there that doesn't know and accept that causal link. 
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If you think they’re similar, I suggest some research on CTE beyond the headlines.  We aren’t even into the dynamics and nuance part of the research yet.  There is fundamental disagreement in our field as to what CTE is from a histological level, as well as a clinical syndrome what it looks like.  Whether it’s under the microscope or in the doctor’s office, CTE is just poorly understood.

And, as much as there’s an intuitive appeal here, we simply cannot say at this point that playing football causes chronic neurodegenerative brain damage.  The tobacco companies fought their public relations battle on the basis that the science was flawed.  The science was, in fact, well established that smoking increases risk of cancer, that there was a strong association if not causal link.  But,  RJ Reynolds and others went the Trump route to dismiss the science.  And that worked for them for many years.

In the case of CTE we don’t even have the science to dismiss.  Our folks are still hassling over whether the tauopathy and NFTs described by McKee et al., represent a distinct thing or not.  As I said here or in the other thread, case series design is an awful, terrible, no good, very bad way at establishing causality.  It’s good at raising new questions and guiding future research.  But, the 112/113 brains with CTE in football players, while great press and click bait, was irresponsible and did public harm in its presentation and framing of the topic. 

 
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