The NFL concussion settlement, finalized in 2015, routinely “fails to deliver money and medical care to former players suffering from dementia and CTE,” saving the NFL “hundreds of millions of dollars, if not more,” according to Will Hobson of the WASHINGTON POST. In the settlement in which the NFL “admitted no wrongdoing," the league "promised to pay every former player who developed dementia or several brain diseases linked to concussions.” The league pledged that players suffering from CTE also would “get paid once they developed symptoms of dementia.” In seven years since the settlement opened, the NFL has “paid out nearly” $1.2B to more than 1,600 former players and their families -- “far more than experts predicted during settlement negotiations.” The league points to these figures as “evidence of the settlement’s fairness.” However, the settlement has “approved about 900 dementia claims since it opened in 2017,” while it has “denied nearly 1,100, including almost 300 involving players who were diagnosed by the settlement’s own doctors.” The collective value of denied dementia claims, based on the average cost of approvals, “could exceed” $700M. That figure does not include cases in which players diagnosed with dementia "never bothered to file claims because they were told they didn’t meet the settlement’s requirements.” NFL attorney Brad Karp disputed the findings and argued that the amount the settlement has paid “proves it’s managed fairly.” Karp: “Absent the Settlement, many of these now-compensated retired players and their family members would have received nothing at all.” Karp claimed that the settlement’s dementia definition “isn’t more difficult than the standard in American medicine" (WASHINGTON POST, 1/31).
